fun stuff I may or may not get to: March 2013

Other Minds presents its annual festival 28 February - 2 March at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

Awesome local chorus Volti sings new music by Dan Visconti, Harold Meltzer, Mark Winges, Kirsten Broberg, and Huang Ruo, 1 -3 March (with a San Francisco performance sandwiched in between two Berkeley outings).

American Bach Soloists present music by Handel (Dixit Dominus), Bach (Concerto for Oboe d'amore), and Vivaldi (Beatus vir and Concerto for Viola d'amore), 1 - 4 March, in their usual various locations.

Violinist Rachel Podger joins Philharmonia Baroque for a program of, not surprisingly, baroque violin music, featuring Corelli, Vivaldi, Mossi, Pergolesi, and Locatelli; 15 - 17 and 20 March, in the usual various locations.

At the Conservatory of Music, new-music ensemble BluePrint, conducted by Nicole Paiement, performs the world premiere of Ian Dicke's Grand Central, along with Lou Harrison's Tandy's Tango, Leo Brouwer's String Quartet No 4, and Armando Luna's Graffiti, on 2 March. For some reason the Conservatory website is not set up with links to individual events, but if you click here you will get the performance calendar for the current month and it's easy enough to slide over to March and then down to BluePrint - check out their other offerings along the way!

Cutting Ball Theater presents Ionesco's The Chairs, in a new translation by Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose, directed by Annie Elias, 1 - 31 March.

Shotgun Players continues through Tom Stoppard's Coast of Utopia trilogy with Part 2, Shipwreck, 22 March - 21 April (they are also presenting Part 1, Voyage, 6 April - 4 May, in case you missed it last year).

Earplay performs music by Yao Chen, Tiffany Sevilla, Mikel Kuehn, Arnold Schoenberg, and Peter Josheff, on 18 March (7:30 at ODC Theater).

The Oakland East Bay Symphony performs Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks (Michael Morgan conducting), Britten's Four Sea Interludes and Passacaglia from Peter Grimes (Bryan Nies conducting), and Faure's Requiem (Lynne Morrow conducting, with soloists Carrie Hennessey and Zachary Gordin), on 15 March at the Paramount.

San Francisco Ballet presents three programs: The first features the world premiere of Yuri Possokhov's version of The Rite of Spring, as well as Beaux (choreographed by Mark Morris* to music by Martinu), and Guide to Strange Places (choreographed by Ashley Page to music by John Adams); that's Program 3, 26 February to 10 March. The second features the world premiere of From Foreign Lands (Alexei Ratmansky choreographer; no composer is listed), as well as Within the Golden Hour (Christopher Wheeldon to music by Ezio Bosso), and Scotch Symphony (George Balanchine to Mendelssohn); that's Program 4, 1 - 9 March. The third features the return of Onegin, by John Cranko to music by Tchaikovsky (but not from his Onegin opera); that's Program 5, 21 - 28 March.

* Mark Morris's own new version of The Rite of Spring will be coming to Cal Performances in June as part of Ojai North.

Speaking of Cal Performances, they have another busy month in March. Here are some highlights: The Secret Garden, a new opera (co-presented with the San Francisco Opera) by Nolan Gasser (music) and Carey Harrison (libretto) based on the beloved childhood classic, 1 - 10 March; the Brentano String Quartet, playing Haydn, Purcell, Bartok, and Beethoven, 3 March; baritone Nathan Gunn, accompanied by Julie Gunn, will sing Schubert, Schumann (Dichterliebe), Barber, Ives, and Bolcom, 9 March; pianist Jeffrey Kahane playing Chopin, Liszt transcriptions of Bach and Schumann and Schubert, Pavel Haas, and Gabriel Kahane (his son), 10 March; Trisha Brown Dance Company, 15 March; the Afiara String Quartet playing Haydn, Beethoven, and a new work by Brett Abigaña, 17 March. Check here for a full listing, though be advised that Wynton Marsalis and the Tallis Scholars (those are separate concerts, which is really too bad) are sold out.

[UPDATE: The Jeffrey Kahane concert has been cancelled due to injury.]

San Francisco Performances presents violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis playing Mozart, Schubert, Lutoslawski, and Saint-Saens, 4 March; mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and pianist Vlad Iftinca, singing and playing many different things, 17 March; pianist Jonathan Biss completing his four-concert series on Schumann and his influences with a solo concert on 17 March featuring Janacek and Berg as well as Schumann and then a concert with the Elias String Quartet on 29 March featuring Schumann, Purcell, and a new work by Timothy Andres (Andres is a pianist as well as composer and will present a "musical self-portrait" on 27 March at one of SFP's Wednesday 6:30 Salon at the Rex concerts); and violinist Midori playing all of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin in two concerts, 23 and 24 March.

Over at the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducts selections from Mozart's Zaide with soprano Nadine Sierra along with Bruckner's gorgeous 7th Symphony, 28 February - 2 March; he is joined by dazzling pianist Yuja Wang for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4, along with the Brahms 1 and Samuel Carl Adams's Drift and Providence, 6 - 9 March (be advised that the Thursday 7 March concert is up in Sonoma); and then he conducts the Mahler 9 on 14-17 March.

The Exit Theater presents Behind the Curtain, a mini-festival of "dramatic readings" of three backstage dramas by three local playwrights: In the Wings by Meghan O'Connor (28 March), The Rose of Youth by Marissa Skudlarek (29 March), and Pastorella by Stuart Bousel (30 March).

Normally I don't list Los Angeles performances here, since I don't live down there, but I received a press release that included the magic words "inspired by American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, The Artist of the Beautiful" so here it is: The Ghost Road Company presents The Bargain and the Butterfly, 26 March - 7 April, at Artworks Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. Ghost Road has also been influenced by Jerzy Grotowski, so they're just full of magic words for me. More information here.