“There’s a certain element of disbelief involved,” said Alden Gilchrist of this Friday’s gala performance celebrating his 60th anniversary with Calvary Presbyterian Church at Fillmore and Jackson Streets, atop Pacific Heights in San Francisco. Gilchrist started out in that edifice in 1951 as organist, later becoming music director for this church that dates back to the Gold Rush.
The program features conductor Kent Nagano — music director of the Berkeley Symphony for 30 years and presently musical director of both the Montreal Symphony and the Bavarian State Opera, who sang under Gilchrist’s direction in the Chancel Choir at Calvary Presbyterian — presiding over the San Francisco Academy Orchestra in his only West Coast appearance this season. Other performances will be given by the Chancel Choir, a jazz cycle by the Dave Scott Quartet and the Santa Rosa Children’s Chorus, including music by Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Dvořák — and Gilchrist himself.
Featured soloists will be Pamela Sebastian, Janet Campbell, Carol Menke, Sara Ganz, Brian Thorsett, Jeff Fields, and Charles Worth. Hoyt Smith of KDFC will interview Gilchrist and Nagano onstage during the gala.
“I had the chance to make music under a brilliant music director,” said Nagano, “to learn how he created his special sounds and color qualities, and who was and is such an inspiration to so many of us musicians who came up in San Francisco.”
Gilchrist noted that with Nagano conducting this Friday, he’ll be in good company: “A couple days before the gala, Kent will be in Rome, performing for the Pope!”
Nagano, who started attending Calvary Presbyterian during his mid-1970s student years, later met Gilchrist through a phone call, when the veteran organist contacted him about composer Olivier Messiaen, whom Nagano had assisted in the ’70s and whom Gilchrist had studied with at the Paris Conservatory years before.
Then, in the summer of 1985, “Kent, for whatever reason, came and sang with the Summer Choir,” Gilchrist recalled. “He’d come in Sunday mornings, we’d all rehearse for three-quarters of an hour, then sing it. He was very shy; he’s gregarious now, by comparison. Apparently, he admires me — and there’s no accounting for taste!”
The genial, humorous conductor and choirmaster has experienced — and initiated — much musical and social variety in his career. Gilchrist was a composition student of Roger Sessions at UC Berkeley. “He taught us — five guys — a great lesson he wanted to pass on, by telling everyone to compose seven complete pieces every week, or don’t come to class. Some of those pieces are among the best I’ve ever written. I can hear him telling us, in his stentorian way: ‘Not ... to ... be ... prolix. I ... am ... prolix. It’s ... a ... waste ... of ... time!”
Of studying with Messiaen in Paris, Gilchrist noted: “He didn’t teach composition; that chair was filled. He taught us analysis, very interesting. He got us to understand Indian ragas, to which he was very hipped. His music then was an interesting combination of raga influence, solfege, and his main emphasis: serial music and music that sounded like serial music. Coming from the music department at Cal, I didn’t feel like a fish out of water.”
Back in the Bay Area, Gilchrist worked with several choirs, one of which “morphed into the Berkeley Community Chorus. With the Berkeley Chamber Singers, we made a lot of recordings. Now chamber vocal groups are everywhere. We were the first.” He credits his old schoolmate from UC Berkeley, Classical Voice’s founder Robert Commanday, for getting him on as a conductor when somebody was looking for one. “I’d never conducted before. ‘But you can figure it out, right? The second beat goes to the right, that sort of thing ...’”
Gilchrist, who has won both the James Phelan and the Prix de Paris composition awards, received the San Francisco Opera Guild Award; accompanied tenor James Schwabacher on world tours; and created the SF CITY (Choral Instrumental & Theatrical for Youth) program — which became MUST (Music in Schools Today), “not quite an acronym, but at least compelling; people were calling up SF CITY to get their sewers fixed, so we changed it.” He also started a jazz services at his church, as well as performing Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions as an integral part of the church service. Among the many students, friends, and colleagues he’s had over the years who will perform on Friday are his first vocal student, Margot Blum Schevill, a good friend since 1956, now weaver and folk textiles specialist and widow of poet James Schevill; and Carol Menke, who will sing a cycle of four songs Gilchrist wrote “last week.” He’s worked with Menke over 30 years.
Asked about his philosophy after six decades of music at Calvary Presbyterian, Gilchrist gave an example. “This thing happened just this morning. ... We were practicing a piece by Stravinsky. I said, ‘If you stop on this phrase, with a consonant before and one after, you’ll be late, and I’ll click my tongue, bang on the piano like a parent nagging a child, not improving what the child could do for itself. So I’ll just stand here and listen instead.’ I stood back, gave no beat whatsoever — and with their collective heartbeat, they took responsibility for the rhythm and kept it. So it’s better when I don’t conduct!”
Note: Friday’s gala performance celebrating Alden Gilchrist’s 60 years at Calvary Presbyterian, starting at 6 p.m. with a reception to follow, is free through a grant from the Calvary Foundation, and open to the public. RSVPs are required: (415) 346-3832; [email protected].