San Francisco Contemporary Music Players continues its 2022-2023 Concert Season with “Temporal Excursions,” a program built partially around musical strands unfolding independently in time. The concert will be presented on Thursday, April 13, 2023 at 8:00 PM in the Taube Atrium Theater of the San Francisco War Memorial Performing Arts Center (401 Van Ness). The program will be preceded at 7:00 PM by SFCMP’s popular “How Music is Made” pre-concert discussion, featuring Artistic Director Eric Dudley in conversation with composer Brian Baumbusch and SFCMP musicians.
In celebration of a special commissioning project with composer Brian Baumbusch, SFCMP will present a live performance experience based around the concept of musical strands unfolding independently in time. One of Baumbusch’s major influences has been Conlon Nancarrow, a composer who struck out on highly experimental paths along the parameters of rhythm and time, creating music that exists in many different tempo frames at once by precisely and inventively punching his own player piano rolls. The program will open with revisitation of the Nancarrow’s “Study No. 3a” in a realization for chamber ensemble by Evan Ziporyn.
Following the Nancarrow will be the world premiere of Baumbusch’s “Polytempo Music,” an SFCMP commission. “Polytempo Music” has been a multi-year project, first conceived in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, for a flexibly designed ensemble in a variety of temporal modes, requiring real-time mixing in which SFCMP’s musicians occupy individualized streams in musical time. As a related component of the project, Baumbusch is developing a Virtual Reality realization of the work.
Following a brief intermission, SFCMP will present “Catch & Release,” a virtuoso composition for seven musicians by San Francisco Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka SALONEN. “Catch & Release” was premiered in 2006, at the Crusell Music Festival in Finland by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra. The 22-minute, three-movement work, has an identical scoring to Igor Stravinsky’s iconic “L’Histoire du Soldat.” The Contemporary Music Players’ performance will mark the Bay Area premiere of this work.