Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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Characteristically distinctive sounds rang out throughout the day during the sixth annual Switchboard Music Festival in San Francisco on Sunday, March 24, 2013. This was the third year in a row the festival has been held at the Brava Theater in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District. The Brava is easily accessible by public transportation or car (although parking can be a nightmare), and makes a great venue for the festival. I hope they are able to continue using the space for many more years to come. Just like last year’s festival, Switchboard incorporated elements of local culture into their show, including a food truck parked right out front selling Indian food. Unfortunately, the food didn’t agree with some of the audience as well as last year’s truck did, I heard several festival attendees complaining of indigestion as the night wore on. Thankfully, the music suffered no ill effects.
Composer, accordionist, and multi-instrumentalist Rob Reich (photo credit: robreich.com)
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
Add Comment »This belated review covers an event prior to the negotiations breakdown that happened in San Francisco. We are happy to hear that—as of March 29—the negotiations have resumed, and we hope that a fair solution for both parties will be found to ensure the future of this wonderful musical institution.
-Thomas Deneuville, Ed.
I was initially somewhat nervous about the San Francisco Symphony’s semi-staged production of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in January (well before contract negotiations between SFS musicians and management broke down, resulting in the current strike). The three-day run of performances, January 17-19, 2013 in Davies Symphony Hall, featured a compendium of music: Edvard Grieg’s familiar incidental music intermixed with more contemporary works by Alfred Schnittke and Robin Holloway. The staging incorporated acting, singing, video projection, and dance. With that many things going on, the number of chances that something could go wrong was enormous. By the time we got to intermission however, I was hooked. For the most part, everything fit together really well. The acting was convincing (even though there was an accident with a costume that resulted in a shirtless Peer at one point), the music fit together quite well, and the video projection was just interesting enough without overpowering what was going on on stage.
Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (photo credit: michaeltilsonthomas.com)
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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Most musicians and audience members alike know Henryk Mikolaj Górecki (1933-2010) primarily for his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, which was composed in 1976. That work didn’t gain Gorecki’s current international attention until the 1992 release of the Nonesuch recording, performed by the London Sinfonietta with Dawn Upshaw as soloist. My experience with Gorecki’s music prior to listening to Naxos’ release of Concerto-Cantata included that recording of the Third Symphony, and also his third string quartet …Songs are Sung, written in 1995 for the Kronos Quartet and dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.
Henryk Górecki
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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I just finished reading Joel Sachs’ new book, Henry Cowell: A Man Made of Music for the third time. I had previously read it for my own pleasure, and I was delighted to be asked to review it. I’ve read an enormous amount of material on Henry Cowell (although nowhere near as much as Sachs has!), and I must say, this book is by far the best comprehensive biography available. Sachs speaks of the “indigestion” that followed reading every piece of paper associated with Henry Cowell plus background information on San Francisco history, 1920s politics, and so forth. Perhaps it took a while to digest all that information, but the resulting book is well worth the wait. It is a wonderful read, both accessible and informative, full of information and stories so vivid you can’t help but be drawn into Cowell’s life. From Cowell’s humble beginnings at the Menlo Park of the late nineteenth century—then a muddy stretch of nothing worlds from the Silicon Valley suburb it is today—the book chronicles a life so full of adventures it could be a novel.
Henry Cowell
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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Pairing Samuel Carl Adams‘ new work Drift and Providence with Mahler’s Fifth Symphony was a bold move on the San Francisco Symphony’s part and also undoubtably placed a lot of pressure on Adams, who already has a lot to live up to (so would you if your father was John Adams). While some on the audience were clearly there for the Mahler and merely tolerating the west coast premiere occupying the first half of the concert, most of those seated around me appeared quite open to the idea of hearing something new. The ones who listened were rewarded with a well-thought-out journey through a musical landscape scattered with enough “landmarks” to keep the ear from wandering.
Samuel Carl Adams
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Posted by Kelsey Walsh »
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Nixon in China. John Adams’ first opera. San Francisco Opera’s series of performances (which began June 8th) represent the San Francisco Bay Area premiere of the fully staged opera, the 25th anniversary of the work (a concerted version with a piano reduction of the score took place here before the formal Houston premiere in 1987), and the 40th anniversary of the events which inspired the opera. As the title suggests, Nixon in China traces the story of Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing in 1972. An interesting historical aside: had democrat Hubert Humphrey won the 1968 election instead, a diplomatic visit to China would have been practically impossible. Nixon, as a republican and an anti-communist, stood a much greater chance of diplomatic success than perhaps any other american politician of the day.
Air Force One touches down outside Beijing – Photo by Cory Weaver
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