San Francisco Performances

We’re championing a new generation of younger artists who were also looking at ways to make this art form relevant, contemporary, and even more equitable. That's our president Melanie Smith in this interview with Voices of the Community on KSFP. It's an inspiring conversation that covers how we're staying connected with arts lovers, how the pandemic created a moment of reflection for live performance, and some of Melanie's favorite moments from our past. Listen to the interview: https://bit.ly/35MDkLr

We wrap up the BobCasts with an episode packed with history and music clips: The Impact of Andalucían Flamenco on Spanish Song and Dance. Long title, great story that combines a rich cultural history with a very complicated instrument. https://bit.ly/2VcZNw1 From the BobCast: Flamenco is a polyrhythmic music, an explicitly African approach to rhythm in... which various contrasting rhythmic layers some of them sung, some of them played on the guitar, some of them clapped, some of them danced are layered, one atop the next. Rhythmically, flamenco has much more in common with African drumming than it does with Western European music.

SFP Artists and Their Art: A very special piece that I hold dear to my heart, says Natasha Paremski about a piece she’ll play in an upcoming performance for us. We hear that often from artists that grace our stage: the programs are always deeply personal, selected with care and intention. It always makes the artist-audience connection a strong one.

SFP Artists and Their Art: Timo Andres talks about a program with us next year: Music I’ve drawn very close to. His carefully selected program is our trademark- a performance with great meaning to the artist, selections that were carefully made, suited for the very moment. The result is always an authentic connection between artist and audience.

Music History Monday: Musical Riots and Assorted Mayhem We mark the riot that occurred on October 26, 1958 62 years ago today when Bill Haley and his Comets played a concert at Berlin’s Sportpalast to an audience of some 7000 people. Using the Bill Haley brouhaha as a precedent, it would be all-too-easy to build an entire post (or two or three) around rock ‘n’ roll-inspired riots. Instead [here is a list of] musical riots that occurred in more unexpected venues, in th...e hoity-toity confines of concert halls and opera houses. August 25, 1830: A performance of Daniel Auber’s opera The Mute Girl of Portici, Brussels, Belgium May 29, 1913: The premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées June 19, 1926: The premiere of the futurist musical work Ballet Mécanique by the Trenton New Jersey-born George Antheil, The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées January 19, 1973: A performance of Steve Reich’s Four Organs, Carnegie Hall, NYC July 7, 2001: A concert Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde performed by the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, Jerusalem International Convention Center And there we have it. New music is new. That which is new often lacks context. That which lacks context is unknown. And for some of us, the unknown inspires fear and loathing. And hissing and booing! SFP Music Historian-In-Residence, Robert Greenberg

InterMusic SF’s online edition of SF Music Day this Sun, Oct 25, Noon- 6pm is the Bay Area’s 13th annual showcase of classical, jazz, contemporary, and global music. The free streamed event features premiere performances by 10 stellar ensembles, professionally pre-recorded in San Francisco's Herbst Theatre. The gathering retains its inviting community spirit, seamless production aesthetic, and unflagging commitment to world-class performances. https://bit.ly/319WIkj

Who knew the guitar is notoriously difficult to compose for? In Robert Greenberg’s BobCast Episode 7 he shares this advice: A number of years ago, the great English guitarist Julian Bream told David Tanenbaum not to premiere a guitar work unless he knew for a fact it was the composer's second guitar work. Sage advice. The guitar is an instrument that gives up its secrets to a non-guitar playing composer only reluctantly. Indeed, the timbral, digital and chordal subtleties of this most subtle and intimate of instruments are truly understood by the guitarist only. Pity the outlander who composes for the guitar for the first time! Missed the BobCast yesterday? Check it out today. https://bit.ly/2VcZNw1

In our Episode 7 BobCast: The Guitar and the Art of the Transcription, music historian Robert Greenberg wants to know: Is there anyone out there that doesn’t like the sound of a Classical guitar (meaning an acoustic Spanish guitar with nylon strings)? Good, because anyone who had raised his or her hand was going to be removed from this BobCast and forced to listen to the Russian Navy Piccolo Ensemble play favorite thrash hits for three agonizing hours; that’ll teach you no...t to like the gorgeously intimate sound of the Classical/Spanish guitar! . Hear more about works in the coming 2020-2021 season composed for the guitar, transcribed for the guitar, and arranged for the guitar in BobCast Episode 7. https://bit.ly/2VcZNw1

The Evolving Art of Chamber Music: Gabe Kahane’s program on our 2019 PIVOT series, The Book of Travelers was called a contemporary song cycle in every way that counts. It bumped up against all sorts of traditions and expectations of the art form. The result was some captivating storytelling. In real-time responsiveness, Kahane infused the artform with new voices in a very literal way. He boarded a train after the 2016 election for a nearly 9,000-mile journey to talk to h...is fellow countrymen and women. Those conversations inspired the text of the works, creating vivid and soulful portraits of everyday Americans. Gimmicky quickly gave way to authenticity in that performance. Kahane’s delivery in the close confines of the Herbst offered both immersion and connection. It was a hallmark SFP chamber music moment: bringing together great artists and audiences for an experience that’s truly illuminating and inspiring.

Be a part of InterMusic SF’s online edition of SF Music Day (Sun, Oct 25), the Bay Area’s 13th annual showcase of classical, jazz, contemporary, and global music. The free streamed event features premiere performances by 10 stellar ensembles, professionally pre-recorded in San Francisco's Herbst Theatre. The gathering retains its inviting community spirit, seamless production aesthetic, and unflagging commitment to world-class performances. Here’s the line-up: Classical & Co...ntemporary Music artists: Del Sol String Quartet, Telegraph Quartet, Tom Stone/Elizabeth Dorman/Amos Yang, Motoko Honda’s AIR Trio Jazz & Global Music artists: Mads Tolling & The Mads Men, Destiny Muhammad Trio, Ricardo Peixoto Trio with Marcos Silva and Brian Rice, Terrence Brewer Group, Rob Reich/Daniel Fabricant Duo, Jeremy Cohen & Andrés Vera of Quartet San Francisco https://bit.ly/319WIkj

In celebration of Beethoven week on our BobCast: In Beethoven’s works Music and Soul are one. Even to attempt to separate the one from the other is an offence. Through [his] music shall we gain access to the soul of this great man; nay, more: it is only in full awareness of our humanity that we shall fully grasp the tremendous reality of his music. --Beethoven conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler

What makes Beethoven special? Start by changing the question a bit: What makes Beethoven’s anger special? At a time when composers were expected to amuse and entertain their audiences, Beethoven got it into his head that his music was not for anyone’s piddling pleasure but his own: that first and foremost, the creation of music was an act of profound self-expression. So this made him the first composer to do what? Tune in and find out! https://bit.ly/33ZyZ7Z

The Evolving Art of Chamber Music: Finding music that elicits emotional connection, provides historical context or transcends time is part of SFP’s booking quest. So it was a no brainer to bring Dreamers’ Circus to Herbst Theatre this coming April to take part in our sixth annual PIVOT Festival. The music of Dreamers’ Circus is music that seeks to unlock imaginations and defies classification. Whether playing with symphony orchestras or joining The Chieftains onstage, the cha...mber band rocks with their new interpretations of Danish, Swedish and Icelandic traditional music whose sound has actually been called authentic folk music from another planet. We kind of like that notion of playing with ‘musical mercury’. In our approach to writing we might find ourselves, whether consciously or otherwise, inspired by our various interests in jazz, classical or more contemporary forms of popular music. But good music is good music. We try and play good music, says the Circus. And that’s very good.

The Evolving Art of Chamber Music: Sometimes stretching boundaries means creating new sounds, sometimes it’s the choice of material and sometimes it’s everything right down to the bowls of water. SFP has always been dedicated to adventurous programming and soprano Dawn Upshaw, pianist Gil Kalish and So Percussion raised the game on what percussion can mean for chamber music with their 2017 program. So Percussion played bowls filled with water, Gil Kalish played the inside of... the piano like a dulcimer and Dawn Upshaw was definitely not leaning into the bend of a stately piano in a sequined gown. The program proved that novelty exhilarates and as one critic put it At times, the ensemble seemed to have been recast as an experimental string quartet. And the audience? They loved it.