Another Opening, Another Show: June 2022

Here we are, halfway through the year, & who knows where in the on-going pandemic, so the usual advice still applies: check for postponements or cancellations before you go, be prepared to show proof of vaccination (& often of a booster shot as well), be prepared to wear a mask. . . Summer approaches, so Festival season is starting, with a couple of major ones this month: Early Music in (mostly) Berkeley, & Jazz at (mostly) the San Francisco Jazz Center. Stay safe, stay strong.

Theatrical

42nd Street Moon revives The Pajama Game, the Jerry Ross / Richard Adler musical, directed by Becky Potter with Music director Armando Fox & choreography by Renee DeWeese, from 2 to 19 June at the Gateway Theater.

Berkeley Rep presents Lucas Hnath's Dana H., directed by Les Waters; the play is adapted from interviews with Dana Higginbotham (Hnath's mother) conducted by Steve Cosson, in which she tells how she, a counselor in a psychiatric ward, was kidnapped by one of the patients & held captive for five months in a series of Florida motel rooms; that's at the Roda Theater from 3 June to 10 July.

The Oakland Theater Project presents the Bay Area premiere of The Mojo & the Sayso, a 1989 play by Aishah Rahman (a participant in the Black arts Movements of the 1960s); it is based on the 1973 murder of a 10-year-old boy by New York City Police, & runs from 3 to 26 June.

Cutting Ball Theater re-opens with The Real Sappho by Aimee Suzara, directed by Nailah Harper-Malveaux; set in Oak-Island in the "not-too-distant future", the play looks at the legendary, the "real", & a potential Sappho & runs 9 June to 10 July.

Hannah Gadsby appears at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in a new show, Body of Work, from 22 to 24 June.

The Aurora Theater has the west coast premiere of Jaclyn Backhaus's Wives, directed by Lavina Jadhwani, in which various prominent wives gather in ahistorical time (I assume this is a bit like Act 1 of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls); that runs from 24 June to 24 July.

BroadwaySF has a lot going on this month at its downtown SF theaters: a revival of Cats plays from 1 to 5 June at the Golden Gate Theater; the national tour of Hadestown, Anaïs Mitchel's musical adaptation of the myths of Orpheus, Eurydice, Hades, & Persephone, plays at the Orpheum from 7 June through 3 July; "Weird Al" Yankovic: The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour plays the Golden Gate Theater on 15 & 16 June, with a promise of a completely different set list at the two performances; Ben Folds: In Actual Person Live for Real Tour (I love these long titles!), in which, no surprise, Ben Folds sings & talks, plays the Golden Gate Theater on 18 June; and The Prom, the musical by Matthew Sklar (music) & Chad Beguilin (lyrics), then takes over the Golden Gate Theater from 21 June to 17 July.

Follies, the great Stephen Sondheim musical, comes to the San Francisco Playhouse from 30 June to 10 September, directed by Bill English with music direction by Dave Dobrusky & choreography by Nicole Helfer.

Operatic

The San Francisco Opera closes its season with (1) Don Giovanni, conducted by Bertrand de Billy & directed by Michael Cavanagh, with Etienne Dupuis in the title role & Adela Zaharia as Donna Anna, Carmen Giannattasio as Donna Elvira, Amitai Pati as Don Ottavio, Luca Pisaroni as Leporello, Christina Gansch as Zerlina, Cody Quattlebaum as Masetto, & Soloman Howard as the Commendatore, from 4 June to 7 July; (2) Bright Sheng's Dream of the Red Chamber, an adaptation by Sheng & David Henry Hwang of the great Chinese novel, conducted by Darrell Ang & directed by Stan Lai, with Konu Kim (Bao Yu), Meigui Zhang (Dai Yu), & Hongni Wu (Bao Chai) as the three points of the central love triangle, from 14 June to 3 July; & (3) a special Verdi concert on 30 June, in which Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads soloists Nicole Car (soprano), Arturo Chacón-Cruz (tenor), Etienne Dupuis (baritone), & Soloman Howard (bass) & the Opera Chorus & Orchestra in arias, ensembles, & orchestral pieces from various Verdi operas.

The San Francisco Symphony presents Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex & Symphony of Psalms, both staged by Peter Sellars & conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, on 10 - 12 June in Davies Hall; the cast for Oedipus includes tenor Sean Panikkar in the title role, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges as his mother, bass-baritone Willard White as Creon/a Messenger/Tiresias, tenor Jose Simerilla Romero as a shepherd, actor Breezy Leigh as Antigone, & dancer Laurel Jenkins.

Pocket Opera presents Offenbach's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, conducted by Frank Johnson & directed by Bethanie Baeven, with Nikola Printz as the Grand Duchess & Chad Somers as Fritz, on 12 June at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 19 June at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 26 June at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Berkeley Chamber Opera presents two one-acters, Stravinsky's Mavra & Prokofiev's Maddalena, at the Hillside Club in Berkeley from 17 to 19 June.

Vocalists

On 10 June, Old First Concerts presents the Passionflower Duo (soprano Gabrielle Lochard & pianist Jonathan Liu) in In Bloom: A Pride Program, featuring songs by Samuel Barber, Roger Quilter, Undine Smith Moore, Brahms, Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Poulenc, Reynaldo Hahn, Aaron Copland, & Howard Swanson.

Lieder Alive! presents tenor Thomas Glenn, pianists Amy Glenn & John Parr, & special guests Heidi Moss Erickson, Kindra Scharich, & Kirk Eichelberger in the Brahms Zigeunerlieder & Liebeslieder Walzer & the Liszt Lieder aus Schillers Wilhelm Tell on 26 June at the Noe Valley Ministry.

Orchestral

Conductor Ruth Reinhardt leads the San Francisco Symphony in Om fotspår och ljus (Of Footprints and Light) – Helsinki Variations by Lotta Wennäkoski, the west coast premiere of the SFS-commissioned Piano Concerto by Mason Bates (with soloist Daniil Trifonov), & the Dvořák 5, & that's at Davies Hall on 2 - 5 June.

Music Director Dawn Harms leads the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony in Adolphus Hailstork's Fanfare on Amazing Grace, Alisa Rose's Embracing Roots Violin Concerto (with Rose as the soloist), & the Tchaikovsky 2, & that's 11 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.     

On 12 June in Zellerbach Hall, Music Director Joseph Young leads the Berkeley Symphony in Rise, a world premiere from Jimmy López Bellido, along with the Beethoven 9, featuring a new text from former Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith, with soloists Shawnette Sulker (soprano), Gabrielle Beteag (mezzo-soprano), Edward Graves (tenor), Nicholas Davis (bass-baritone), & Dr Lynne Morrow leading an ad hoc community chorus.

On 16 - 19 June in Davies Hall, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in Four Original Versions of Ritirata notturna di Madrid by Luigi Boccherini /  Luciano Berio, the Bartók Piano Concerto #1 (on 16 - 17 June) or #3 (on 18 - 19 June) with soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Strum by Jessie Montgomery, & the Pines of Rome by Respighi.

San Francisco Opera Music Director Eun Sun Kim crosses the street to Davies Hall on 20 June to lead the National Brass Ensemble in Richard Strauss's Vienna Philharmonic Fanfare as well as several world premieres: DEIFIED by Jonathan Bingham, Brass Fantasy by Arturo Sandoval, & The Ring by Wagner as arranged by Timothy Higgins (presumably not the entire tetralogy).

Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in Steven Stucky's Radical Light & John Adams's Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (both SF Symphony premieres, with Víkingur Ólafsson on piano in the Adams), along with the Sibelius 5, & that's 23 - 25 June in Davies Hall.

Ben Simon leads the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in a concert that was postponed from New Year's Eve, featuring Fanny Mendelssohn-Hansel's Overture in C Major, the Beethoven 4, & the Beethoven Piano Concerto #4 with soloist Hilda Huang, & that's 24 June at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, 25 June at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 26 June at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Chamber Music

On 26 June at Davies Hall, members of the San Francisco Symphony will perform Fred Bretschger's Fantasy Duo for Cello and Bass, Arno Babajanian's Piano Trio in F-sharp minor, & Bartók's String Quartet #5.

Instrumentalists

The San Francisco Symphony presents saxophonist Steven Banks & pianist Xak Bjerken at Davies Hall on 1 June, when they will perform the Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by Paul Creston, the Sonata in F minor, Opus 120, #1 (arranged for saxophone) by Brahms, & Come As You Are by Banks.

On 5 June at Old First Concerts, pianist Jason Sia will perform music by Antonio Fragoso, Robert Schumann, Debussy, John Corigliano, & Cécile Chaminade.

Old First Concerts presents pianist Patricia Garcia-Gil on 12 June in Not Only Muses, featuring music by three women (Marianne Von Martinez, Pauline Garcia Viardot, & Rosa Garcia Ascot) with connections to Spain.

Choral

On 3 June, Old First Concerts presents the San Francisco Girls Chorus School Level IV (the chorus's most advanced ensemble), led by Dr Anne K Hege, in works by Florence Price, Nacio Herb Brown, Yossi Spivak, Pekka Kostiainen, Sheldon Secunda, Michael McGlynn, Morten Lauridsen, Kinley Lange, Orlande de Lassus, & Fanny Mendelssohn.

Volti closes its season with Shadows, Visions and Dreams, featuring the world premiere of a Volti commission from their former tenor Eric Tuan, as well as works by Aftab Darvishi, Jens Ibsen, Tania León, & Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, & you can hear it on 18 June at Saint Paul's Episcopal in Walnut Creek or 19 June at Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Girls Chorus, led by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, presents the world premiere of an SFGC commission, Tomorrow’s Memories: A Little Manila Diary by composer Matthew Welch, with special guests Florante Aguilar (guitar), Patti Kilroy (violin), & Levy Lorenzo (percussion), & stage director Sean San José; & that runs 22 - 25 June at the Magic Theater in San Francisco.

Early / Baroque Music

The big news for early music aficionados is the in-person return of the biannual Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, brought to us by the San Francisco Early Music Society; the Exhibition & Marketplace, free & open to the public, will be held at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley from 9 to 11 June; there is usually a Fringe Festival, but so far there aren't any concerts listed on the website; but the Festival Main Stage schedule is full, runs from 5 to 12 June, & features:

5 June: the American & Festival debut of the Basel-based medievalists Sollazzo Ensemble, performing sacred music at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley in the late afternoon, as well as our own Cantata Collective, performing three Bach cantatas with soprano Sherezade Panthaki & bass-baritone Paul Max Tipton, at First Congregational in Berkeley that evening;

6 June: making a Festival debut, soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon & Nicholas Mathew on fortepiano (a replica of an 1820 Viennese instrument, to be exact) present Dark Dreams: Lieder of Franz Schubert, Clara Schumann, & Robert Schumann (I'm sure this will be terrific, & I love Schubert & the Schumanns, & understand this is a HIP performance, but I still think it's stretching things to include their works under "early music"); that's at Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus, & will be proceeded by a free lecture about Clara Schumann by musicologist Frances Falling;

7 June: at a noontime concert at Hertz Hall, you can hear the Festival debuts of cellist Keiran Campbell & fortepianist Sezi Seskir, playing Beethoven & CPE Bach (same caveats as above about Schubert & the Schumanns, only this time about Beethoven as "early music", even if he's accompanied by a Bach); that evening, at First Congregational in Berkeley, you can hear the Sollazzo Ensemble again, this time exploring the music of 14th-century Florence;

8 June: hopping the bay to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a late afternoon concert, you can hear violinists Cynthia Keiko Black & Elizabeth Blumenstock, harpsichordist Corey Jamason, & viola da gamba player Elisabeth Reed playing chamber music from 17th-century Germany & Austria, including works by Dietrich Becker, Biber, Buxtehude, Johann Jakob Froberger, Pachelbel, & Johann Heinrich Schmelzer; that evening, back at First Congregational in Berkeley, you can hear violinist Rachel Podger playing a selection of Bach's sonatas & partitas;

9 June: at noon in Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus, Annette Richards & David Yearsley, playing organ, harpsichord, & fortepiano, will walk in the footsteps of England's first great musicologist, Charles Burney, with musical examples from Italy, Germany, U& Spain; that evening, at First Congregational in Berkeley, you can hear Vox Luminis, led by Lionel Meunier, in Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri; 

10 June: at noon in Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, Early Music America will present an "Emerging Artists Showcase" featuring choreographer/dancer Julia Bengtsson with cellist Rocío López Sánchez, fortepianist Patricia Garcia Gil, & violinist Pauline Kempf; at mid-afternoon at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, you can hear baritone & musicologist Jean Bernard Cerin, joined by soprano Michele Kennedy & pianist Nicholas Mathew, discuss Lisette quitté la plaine, a folk tune from his native Haiti that traveled to North America & Europe before landing back in Haiti (the program will include a showing of Lisette, a feature-length documentary by Cerin & Brandi Berry); the performance that evening, at First Congregational in Berkeley, features Chanticleer & works by Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Ockeghem, Antoine Busnois, & Cristóbal Morales associated with the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (Chanticleer will repeat the performance on 11 June at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco);

11 June: at noon at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, Matthew Dirst will play organ music from the years between Bach & Mendelssohn, when the organ was mostly not favored by leading composers, though there will be a piece by Mozart as well as by Johann Ludwig Krebs, John Stanley (Handel's successor as organ soloist for the Covent Garden oratorios), & Christian Friederich Rüppe; that evening, at First Congregational in Berkeley, singer & actress Sarah Chalfy, from ARTEK, will perform Artemisia – Light & Shadow, a one-woman show exploring the life of baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi; then, late-night at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley (assuming that, unlike me, you can manage to stay up past 10:00 PM), you can hear Fire & Grace & Ash (that's violinist Edwin Huizinga, guitarist William Coulter, & mandolinist Ashley Broder) along with mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan, in an exploration & fusion of baroque & folk music, starting with Bach & ending with Bill Monroe;

12 June: early afternoon at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley, you can hear the Barefoot All-Stars (Marie Dalby Szuts, Peter Hallifax, Julie Jeffrey, David Morris, Farley Pearce, & Elisabeth Reed, all on viol) play all of the music for six viols by William Lawes; the Festival will close in the late afternoon at Berkeley's First Congregational, when Vox Luminis, led by Lionel Meunier, will perform a double set of Magnificats, one by Bach & the other by his predecessor at Saint Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau.

Modern / Contemporary Music

Full is a series at BAM/PFA curated by Sarah Cahill & scheduled with the full moon, & there are two programs this month (though one had been postponed, so I don't know if it's still coinciding with the lunar cycle): the first, which had originally been scheduled for last February but now is on 3 June, is The Gypsy Chronicles, featuring Femi Andrades (FEMI) in a spoken word & musical performance; the second, on 14 June, features Splinter Reeds, a reed-instrument quintet (Kyle Bruckmann on oboe, Bill Kalinkos on clarinet, Nicki Roman on saxophone, Jeff Anderle on bass clarinet, & Dana Jessen on bassoon), playing new music by Laura Cetilia, Mario Godoy, Paula Matthusen, Yannis Kyriakides, & Niloufar Nourbakhsh.

Garden of Memory returns to Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland on the Summer Solstice (21 June); performers include Kitka, Sarah Cahill, Pamela Z, Beth Custer with Will Bernard & Ellen Gronnigen, Dylan Mattingly, The Living Earth Show with Guillermo Gallindo, Carl Stone, John Benson, Paul Dresher, Randy Porter, Orchestra Nostalgico, Dan Plonsey & Friends, Robert Nance, Gautam Tejas Ganeshan, Duo B, Theresa Wong, Jon Raskin, Gino Robair & Hallie Smith, David Gibbons, Anne Hege, Kate Stenberg & Irene Sazer, & others.

Phillip Greenlief brings Citta di Vitti, music inspired by a trilogy of Antonioni films starring Monica Vitti, to the Center for New Music on 3 June, when he will be joined by Lisa Mezzacappa & Jason Levis.

The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble closes its season with Myth & Memory: Berio Folk Songs with New Companions; the new companions include "a topsy-turvy resetting of the classic Little Red Riding Hood story" by Carl Schimmel, & you can hear it all on 5 June at Littlefield Concert Hall at Mills College in Oakland & on 6 June at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

On 6 June at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, Other Minds presents Øyvind Torvund’s The Exotica Album; the piece, which plays off of mid-century concepts of "exotic" & "island" music, will be performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, conducted by Eric Dudley, with Larry Ochs on saxophone & Jørgen Træen on synthesizer; after the performance, there will be a discussion between the composer & Charles Amirkhanian, Executive & Artistic Director of Other Minds.

Ensemble for These Times performs an encore of their Emigres & Exiles in Hollywood concert, featuring chamber works & movie arrangements by some of the composers who fled Europe in the 1930s & '40s, including Korngold, Alexandre Tansman, Miklós Rózsa, Hanns Eisler, Bronislaw Kaper, Henryk Vars, Szymon Laks, Mieczysław Weinberg, André Tchaikowsky, & Grażyna Bacewicz, & that's at the Berkeley Piano Club on 18 June.

Cinematic

SF IndieFest Presents: Doc Fest plays at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco from 1 to 9 June; you can see the whole schedule here.

As always, the PFA part of BAM/PFA has some interesting programs launching this month:

Starting 3 June, you can see a retrospective of the women-centered films of 90-year-old Hungarian director Márta Mészáros;

Starting 4 June, you can see Film Preservation: Celebrating The Film Foundation, which presents some of the movies saved for posterity by the Scorsese-established Film Foundation and its World Cinema Project, ranging from renowned classics like L’Atalante or The Color of Pomegranates to rarities such as Lubitsch's 1924 Forbidden Paradise – so many great films (though they also have the Powell/Pressburger I Know Where I'm Going, but I'm apparently very much in the minority in disliking that film);

& starting 12 June, you can see Indelible Moments: May I Have This Dance, a series of movies, all officially not musicals, that include memorable dance or dance-adjacent scenes, ranging from The Gold Rush (see the original 1925 version if you can, not the 1942 re-edit) to Beau Travail.

Jazz

Andrew Barnes Jamieson will improvise on keyboards on 10 June at the Center for New Music, sometimes solo & sometimes joined by Zach Hazen & Roger Kim.

The Marta Sanchez Quintet plays the music of its latest CD, SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum), at the Center for New Music on 26 June.

The 39th Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival runs from 8 to 19 June, with quite an array of possibilities (unless otherwise noted, all performances are at the SF Jazz Center):

8 June: Sun Hop Fat plays in the Ethiopian jazz traditional with a Nor Cal twist; the Pacific Mambo Orchestra is a Latin dance big band; vocalist Gregory Porter will be at the Paramount Theater with music from All Rise & Still Rising, his most recent recordings;

9 June: Molly Miller brings her guitar & her trio to the Center; pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba & vocalist Aymée Nuviola bring music from their Cuban-style recording Viento y Tiempo;

10 June: trombonist & vocalist Natalie Cressman appears with Brazilian guitarist & singer Ian Faquini with music from their album Setting Rays of Summer & material from their upcoming release; all-female mariachi band Flor de Toloache will share the stage with singer, songwriter, & guitarist Edna Vazquez;

11 June: saxophone & drum trio Mo'Fone will appear; bassist Christian McBride will appear with his quintet; 

12 June: you can hear tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés, & singer Dianne Reeves perform together; vocalist Nicolas Bearde will hold a concert of his own as well;

13 June: Changüí Majadero will perform its take on the Afro-Cuban musical tradition of changüí, the 19th century foundation of contemporary salsa; saxophonist Nubya Garcia & harpist Brandee Younger will appear together;

14 June: pianist Kenny Werner joins harmonica-player Grégoire Maret for Between a Smile & a Tear, a tribute to the late harmonica-player Toots Thielemans, long-time collaborator of Werner & mentor to Maret; pianist, composer, & bandleader Danilo Pérez returns with this Global Messengers sextet;

15 June: guitarist Dan Wilson plays music from his new album Vessels of Wood and Earth; organist Delvon Lamarr brings his trio;

16 June: saxophonist Howard Wiley appears with his band; singer, violinist, & banjo player Rhiannon Giddens appears along with Francesco Turrisi to perform music from her recent album They're Calling Me Home (the duo also appear on 17 June);

17 June: in addition to a second day of performances by Rhiannon Giddens, bossa nova vocalist Masha Campagne will appear; over at Herbst Theater, vocalist Kim Nalley will perform a tribute to Nina Simone;

18 June: Cuban vocalist Issac Delgado brings his all-star Con Tumbao band; the HunterTones play jazz funk; Jane Monheit sings over at Herbst Theater;

19 June: Bay Area septet Con Brio helps close out the festival; while over at Herbst Theater, Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, along with special guests Suzanna Smith, Rickey Woodard, & Harold Jones, pay tribute to Peggy Lee.