Date & Time: Sunday March 13, 2022 at 7 p.m.
Venue: Incarnation Episcopal Church, 1750 29th Avenue, San Francisco
Tickets: $25 General, $20 Seniors/Students
Eventbrite Ticketing: Buy tickets online
Program
The Music of Anton Webern (commemorating the composer’s 75th death anniversary in 2020)
- Satz für Klavier (Janis Mercer)
- Four Pieces for Violin and Piano Op. 11 (Daniel Lewin, Janis Mercer)
- Five Songs after Poems by Richard Dehmel (Caroline Jou Armitage, Janis Mercer)
- Three Little Pieces for Cello and Piano, Op, 11 (Robert Howard, Janis Mercer)
- String Quartet (1905) (Daniel Lewin, Dan Flanagan, Jacob Hansen Joseph, Thalia Moore)
- Variations for Piano, Op. 27 (Janis Mercer)
- Five Songs on Poems by Stefan George, Op. 4 (Heidi Moss, Janis Mercer)
- Selections from The Kinderstück Project (Janis Mercer). Music by Brian Belét, Pablo Furman, Jim McManus, Martha Stoddard, Donivan Johnson, former students from San Francisco Community Music Center
- Quartet Op. 22 (Daniel Lewin, Matt Ingalls, Ricardo Martinez, Janis Mercer)
All music by Anton Webern unless otherwise noted. Program order subject to change.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
In accordance with health and safety guidelines from the City and County of San Francisco, a face covering is required for all concerts at Incarnation Episcopal church and must be worn at all times. Face masks must completely cover nose and mouth and have ear loops or similar to hold in place. Gaiters and bandanas are not acceptable. Please click here for full details.
About the Artists
- Caroline Jou Armitage, soprano
- Dan Flanagan, violin
- Daniel Lewin, violin
- Heidi Moss, soprano
- Jacob Hansen Joseph, viola
- Janis Mercer, piano
- Matt Ingalls, clarinet
- Ricardo Martinez, saxophone
- Robert Howard, cello
- Thalia Moore, cello
Soprano Caroline Jou Armitage is known to Bay Area audiences for her “absolutely beautiful” performances sung with “pitch-perfect clarity and affecting intensity” (San Francisco Classical Voice). A frequent soloist with the California Bach Society, she has performed Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Bach’s Cantatas BWV 21 and 198, Bach’s Mass in G Major, Bach’s Mass in A Major, and Respighi’s Lauda per la Nativita (role of Angel). Caroline has also taken the stage at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition and the Amherst Early Music Festival. Her operatic roles include Laetitia in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, Lucy in Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera, the First Lady and Papagena from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Norina in scenes from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. She was the featured soloist in a concert of opera arias and choruses with Chora Nova where she sang arias from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Weber’s Der Freichütz, and Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Caroline currently studies voice with Karen Clark and harpsichord with Tamara Loring Greene.
Dan Flanagan currently serves as Concertmaster of the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera, Concertmaster of the Modesto Symphony, Concertmaster of West Edge Opera, Concertmaster of Opera Paralléle, and Instructor of Violin at University of California, Berkeley. A dedicated orchestral player, Flanagan has performed as concertmaster with the Oakland Symphony, Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony, California Musical Theater, Festival Opera of Walnut Creek, Symphony Silicon Valley, Merced Symphony and Symphony Napa Valley. He performs regularly with the San Francisco Opera and Ballet and records film, video game, and television soundtracks with the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of the Solano Trio, the Eco Ensemble and was a founding member of the Farallon Quintet. He will make his Carnegie Hall debut in October of 2022, premiering 20 new works for solo violin inspired by paintings. This will be followed by a tour and an album released by AVIE Records. His original compositions have been heard throughout the SF Bay Area; he’s been commissioned by Hunters Point Shipyard Artists, Swedenborgian Church of San Francisco, Gold Coast Chamber Players, and many colleagues.
Daniel Lewin has had an unusually varied career as a chamber musician, concertmaster, and teacher. He received Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the Juilliard School as a student of Joseph Fuchs. Mr. Lewin was Concertmaster of the Charleston Symphony (S.C), the Nevada Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony and the Cedar Rapids Symphony, among others. He has also been a member of the National, Houston, and San Antonio Symphonies, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Daniel Lewin has been a Professor of Violin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of Memphis. He has performed at many summer music festivals, including Cabrillo, Casals, Grand Tetons, Skaneateles, Spoleto and Deer Valley.
Noted for her “rich and radiant soprano” (Edward Oriz, Sacramento Bee), Heidi Moss has performed on national and international stages such as Opera Memphis and IVAI in Italy as wells as numerous local companies such as Opera Parallèle, Festival Opera, West Edge Opera, Livermore Opera, Opera San José, Fremont Symphony, Peninsula Symphony, Oakland Symphony, Livermore Amador Symphony, Diablo Symphony, and the Sacramento Choral Society. A champion of new music, she helped spearhead the performance of eight song premieres by eight different renowned composers for an alte/neue lieder fest with LIEDER ALIVE! including Daron Hagen, David Conte, Erling Wold, Kurt Erickson, and Henry Mollicone. In 2022, she will premiere a new song set by Tarik O’Regan as a part of the same series. Her collaborations with living composers included a recital of works by Jake Heggie, with the composer himself at the piano. She has also premiered works by philanthropist Gordon Getty with the Russian National Orchestra and San Francisco Opera, most recently in a reading of his opera, Plumpjack with Lester Lynch. She frequently collaborates with her husband, composer Kurt Erickson, and has premiered many of his works such as Song of Solace, Young Sea, and the Neue lieder set Ich und Du. Heidi has also garnered recognition in major vocal competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (NYC First Place Winner), the Liederkranz Awards, the MacAllister Awards, and the KDFC competition which resulted in a performance with pianist Lang Lang. In 2019, she was awarded the prestigious “Best in the Bay” award for her Richard Strauss recital featuring John Parr of Deutsch Oper Berlin at the piano.
Bay Area native Jacob Hansen-Joseph has performed with some of the worlds leading ensembles including the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and has played chamber music with the likes of Alon Goldstein, Toby Appel, and members of the Juilliard String Quartet. He lives in Oakland, enjoys smoking ribs and briskets, and has an Australian Cattle dog named Sergeant Slaughter.
Janis Mercer’s recording of Webern’s piano music was praised as “incredibly expressive… lyrical” (American Record Guide). As a solo pianist and accompanist, her interest in the music of the Second Viennese School has continued unabated for decades. With her ensemble, schwungvoll!, she received funding from the Zellerbach Family Fund for a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Webern’s death in 1995. In 2005 she commemorated the 60th anniversary of his death with the commissioning of student and professional composers to write music “completing” Webern’s unfinished children’s piano cycle. These pieces were performed as part of concerts of Webern’s music in San Francisco and Spokane, Washington. She was also invited to compose a chamber work and to attend the 2005 kofomi (KompositionForumMittersill) conference that staged commemorative concerts throughout the town of Mittersill, Austria, where Webern was killed.
Reviled for his “shapeless sonic tinkering” by the Los Angeles Times, oakland musician Matt Ingalls is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble, and internet radio station devoted to new ideas and traditions of experimental music, performance art, live electronic music, Bay Area composition, and the various facets of contemporary improvisation.
Originally from San Jose, CA, Ricardo Martinez is Assistant Professor of Practice in Saxophone at Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific. Martinez has performed concerts internationally in France, Scotland, and Japan. An avid chamber musician, Martinez earned Grand Prize in the 2019 Plowman Chamber Music Competition, First Prize in the 2017 Chicago Woodwind Ensemble Competition and First Prize in the 2015 East Central Division MTNA Chamber Music Competition. Martinez studied under acclaimed saxophonists Eugene Rousseau at the University of Minnesota, and Jean-Yves Fourmeau in France where he obtained the Médaille d’Or in saxophone and chamber music with honors at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Cergy-Pontoise. Martinez completed graduate work at Indiana University where he served as Associate Instructor of Saxophone to Otis Murphy. Additional private instructors include David Henderson and William Trimble.
A native of Atlanta, GA, Robert Howard began studying cello at age 12. Agraduate of Rice University and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has studied and performed at festivals such as Tanglewood, Spoleto, Verbier, the Accademia Chigiana, and the Sandor Vegh Academy in Prague. Robert won first prize in the Rome Festival Competition and has received grants from the Maggini and Virtu Foundations. Robert has performed in the Festival Internacional de Musica in Costa Rica, the Festival de Guadarama in Spain, and on the Mostly Mozart series in Lincoln Center. He has performed with American Bach Soloists, New Century Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, and the San Francisco Symphony. A regular guest on many Bay Area chamber music series, Robert has also made concerto appearances with BARS Orchestra and Stanford Symphony. He has worked directly with composers such as Osvaldo Golijov, Gabriela Frank, George Perle, George Benjamin, and Jonathan Berger. Robert runs his own house concert series, concertsbythesquare.org, which combine thematically linked chamber music programs with food and short lecture presentations. A passionate teacher, he has made two trips to Kenya, where he taught and performed. He has coached at San Francisco Conservatory, Stanford University, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University, and the Conservatorio Superior Coruña in Spain.
A Washington D.C. native, Thalia Moore attended the Juilliard School of Music as a scholarship student of Lynn Harrell. While at Juilliard, she was the recipient of the Walter and Elsie Naumberg Scholarship and won First prize in the National Arts and Letters String Competition.She has appeared as a soloist at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Recital Hall, the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, the Herbst Theater in San Francisco and the San Francisco Legion of Honor, among others. She has also performed as a guest artist at the Olympic Music Festival in Seattle, the Grand Teton Music Festival and the Music in the Vineyards Chamber Music Festival. In 1991, Ms. Moore appeared in the last episode of the TV series, Midnight Caller, and in 1993, she was featured as a soloist with San Francisco Chamber Symphony under the direction of Roger Norrington. In 1996, she performed one of the first Bay Area performances of the composer’s version of Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations with the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra. She was named a Cowles Visiting Artist at Grinnell College (Iowa) and shortly thereafter won election to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. As a member of the new music groups Earplay and the Empyrean Ensemble, she has recorded works by Mario Davidovsky, Maria Niederberger, Ross Bauer, Cindy Cox, William Kraft, Jorge Liderman, Kurt Rohde and David Rakowski. She has presented numerous premieres of works, including the 2005 world premiere of Laws of Motion, a concerto by Richard Festinger, written especially for her. Thalia Moore joined the San Francisco Opera Orchestra as Associate Principal Cello in 1982. She is also a member of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.