Museum Monday 2023/9

 

detail of The Three Shades by Auguste Rodin, at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco

Mark Morris Dance Group: The Look of Love

For reasons unfathomable to me, Cal Performances persists in 8:00 start times most evenings, which means that, no matter how enticing their offerings, I'm mostly not going to bother with them unless it's something I think I would really regret missing, which is why I found myself in Zellerbach Hall at 8:00 last Saturday for the second performance of the Bay Area premiere of The Look of Love, Mark Morris's tribute to the late Burt Bacharach.

As usual with the Mark Morris Dance Group, the musical accompaniment was live; Ethan Iverson, who performed the same function for Morris's Beatles piece, Pepperland, had arranged the songs (as well as an excerpt from the soundtrack to The Blob) & performed piano as part of a small jazz ensemble, accompanying the sweet, stylish, & haunting voice of Marcy Harriell (who also designed her own elegant black gown).The songs were mostly familiar, or half-familiar, to me, & they do have an uncanny way of sticking in your mind for many days after you hear them.

Another frequent Morris collaborator, Isaac Mizrahi, designed the costumes, which were evocative of that peak Bacharach period, the 1960s, with their bright shades of pink & orange offset by muted moss green, though, in typical Morris style, boundaries, of gender among other things, are blurred (women & some men are in tunics or short dresses, some are in pants & tanktops), so this work in no way looks like a simple exercise in candy-coated nostalgia. When I tried to figure out exactly how many colors there were in the costumes, I realized that there were many more than I had first assumed; there was orange, for example, but when I tried to see how many other orange pieces there were, none of the other shades quite matched the first, & what looked like a unity turned out to be a series of subtle variants.

The dance achieves the same effect: what at first might seem straightforward, a swooping celebration of love, breaks down into something more complicated & ambiguous. There are ten dancers, & some chairs, & a single deep color glowing on the back wall, a color that harmonizes with the costumes & that changes from time to time (lighting by Nicole Pearce). There are duets, but often with tension as well as longing between the two lovers; or a third dancer/lover appears to distract the couple in different ways. As often with Morris, there is some straightforward illustration of the words: dancers mime sneezing to "You get enough germs to catch pneumonia" from I'll Never Fall in Love Again; during an extended riff on the opening of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, as the instruments plink like the first drops plashing down, the strolling dancers pause, lift out their hands to check (was that a random drop, or the start of a downpour?), tilt their heads back to catch a few drops.

Sometimes the gestures slide from literal to metaphoric: during Do You Know the Way to San Jose?, as the "stars who never were" are pumping gas, there is a rapid, tight, up-&-down movement of a clenched fist that suggests pumping gas but also deep reserves of barely suppressed anger & frustration. There is graceful swirling, but the most passionate & dramatic moments are for love expressed through jealousy & anger. In one of the later movements the dancers, at different times, sit in one of the chairs & move their arms up & down in a way that suggests a bird's wings, but a bird whose flapping isn't quite wide & powerful enough to lift it up into the air (the effect is of frustration & longing).

This is not a dark & gloomy dance, though. Even something as potentially sinister as the creeping sounds of The Blob have a comic element to them. There are moments of dazzling, intricate beauty, as in the complicated patterning of the lines of dancers in Walk on By (I wanted to see that movement from the balcony instead of my front-row orchestra seat). The last number is I Say a Little Prayer, & we leave the complications of love with a benediction towards the loved one – but are the various lovers still together? Will they stay together? Maybe, maybe not; what matters is the generous gesture outwards.

Before the curtain rose Morris came out & gave a brief, witty speech in which he mentioned last year's visit by the troupe to Cal Performances, which was cancelled after the first performance when COVID hit the company & they had to shelter in place, on the other side of the country from their usual home (that was why, for the first time in years, I missed a visit from the MMDG). He was happier to see the full houses on this visit. He then dedicated the performances to the memory of Bacharach. It was a fitting & touching tribute.

Friday Photo 2023/8

 

Lincoln Park, Sunday afternoon

Another Opening, Another Show: March 2023

Once again, there's a lot to choose from around the Bay this month: 

Theatrical

Golden Thread Theater presents What Do the Women Say?, featuring "the work of Middle Eastern women artists who are fighting against injustice through their art", & that's 8 March at Brava Theater Center in San Francisco.

San Francisco Playhouse presents Clue, a comic murder mystery based on the 1985 film (which was based on the familiar board game), directed by Susi Damilano, from 9 March to 22 April; I recently watched the movie, having heard that it was a hilarious cult film, & honestly . . .  I don't get it. It has a terrific cast but was only, in my view, mildly amusing, & much of the humor has not aged well at all (lots of homophobic jokes) & it was just all around awkward. That doesn't mean it can't be revamped into a fun evening of theater, though!

The UC-Berkeley Drama Department presents Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, directed by Peter Glazer, at Durham Studio Theater in Dwinelle Hall from 16 to 19 March.

BroadwaySF brings Bartlett Sher's revival of Fiddler on the Roof to the Golden Gate Theater from 22 to 26 March.

42nd Street Moon presents Sondheim's famously troubled "backwards" play, Merrily We Roll Along, from 23 March to 9 April.

Shotgun Players open their season with Marivaux's The Triumph of Love, translated by Stephen Wadsworth & directed by Patrick Dooley, beginning 25 March at the Ashby Stage.

The Oakland Theater Project presents Aleshea Harris's Is God Is, directed by William Hodgson, about young adult twins embarking on a quest after they receive a letter from a mother they thought was dead, & that runs from 31 March to 21 April.

ACT presents Qui Nguyen's Poor Yella Rednecks: Vietgone 2, directed by Jaime Castañeda, the second part of a "hip-hop trilogy about a Vietnamese family who swapped war-torn Saigon for rural ’70s Arkansas", at the Strand Theater from 30 March to 7 May.

Berkeley Rep presents the west coast premiere of Sanaz Toossi's English, directed by Mina Morita, about four adults preparing for their exam in English as a foreign language in Iran in 2008, &  that runs from 31 March to 7 May.

Talking

George McCalman will discuss his new book, Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen, a series of brief biographies & portraits, at the Berkeley Art Museum on 5 March.

Luanne Andreotti will give a lecture on Sargent & Spain, related to the Legion of Honor's current exhibit, on 22 March at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; the lecture will be followed by a performance of Spanish music by guitarist Larry Ferrara.

Operatic

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents Menotti's The Consul, conducted by Donato Cabrera & directed by Patricia Racette, on 11 - 12 March.

Cal Performances presents the American premiere of William Kentridge’s Sibyl, inspired by the stories of the Cumaean Sibyl, with music by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd, in Zellerbach Hall from 17 to 19 March. As part of Kentridge's residency at Cal, the Pacific Film Archive will be showing some of his opera films; see the listing below under Cinematic.

West Edge Opera, in partnership with Earplay, present their annual Snapshot program, previewing new operas-in-progress; this year, the program includes: Port City (music by Byron Au Yong, libretto by Christopher Chen); The Limit of the Sun (music by Luna Pearl Woolf, libretto by Andrea Stolowitz), When Purple Mountains Burn (music by Shuying Li, libretto by Julian Crouch), The Morpehus Quartet (music by Beth Ratay, libretto by John Glore), & L'Autre Moi (music by Matthew Recio, libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann), & that's 18 March at the Hillside Club in Berkeley & 19 March at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco.

Pocket Opera presents its version of Die Fledermaus (not a work I'm fond of, but I think it would respond well to their treatment) on 19 March at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, 26 March at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 2 April at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

On 25 March at Herbst Theater you can see the world premiere of Prospero's Island, a chamber opera from Allen Shearer & Claudia Stevens based on The Tempest; Nathaniel Berman will conduct & Phil Lowery direct, & the cast includes Andrew Dwan, Shawnette Sulker, Bradley Kynard, Amy Foote, Sergio Gonzalez, Julia Hathaway, Angela Jarosz, & members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus as penguins.

The Wagner Society of Northern California will present Jeffrey McMillan (Public Relations Director of the San Francisco Opera), speaking on Bayreuth of the West: Wagner at San Francisco Opera. a look at the role Wagner's operas have played in the SF Opera's century of existence, & that's 25 March at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

Choral

Paul Flight leads the California Bach Society in French Impressions, featuring works by Fauré (the Requiem, the Cantique de Jean Racine, & Madrigal), along with Lili Boulanger's Sous Bois & Hend Badings's Trois Chansons Bretons, & that's 3 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, 4 March at All Saints' Episcopal in Palo Alto, & 5 March at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Sacred & Profane, in collaboration with the Circadian String Quartet as well as some additional string players, will perform Considering This Moment: Music With Strings, featuring works by Zanaida Robles, David Conte, Eric Whitacre, & the American premiere of Karin Rehnqvist’s Day is here!; & you can hear it all on 3 March at Saint John's Presbyterian in Berkeley & 4 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo will appear at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley on 4 -5 March.

Clerestory performs Phoenix Rising, "a musical exploration of loss, longing, metamorphosis, and rebirth" including works by Tallis, Josquin, Elgar, Holst, Clara Schumann, Saunder Choi, & Stacy Garrop, on 4 March at the Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco or 5 March at Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland.

Paul Flight leads Chora Nova in Holst's The Cloud Messenger (the American premiere of the chamber orchestra version) & Randall Thompson's Frostiana on 18 March at First Church in Berkeley.

Chanticleer & the San Francisco Girls Chorus join for Neighbor Tones; the program will include "a new, extended commission by Chanticleer’s ‘22-’23 composer in residence, Ayanna Woods", & that's 17 March at Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, 18 March at First Presbyterian in Berkeley, & 21 March at Mission Santa Clara.

Vocalists

The Schwabacher Recital Series presents two concerts this month, both in the War Memorial's Taube Atrium Theater: on 1 March you can hear soprano Meigui Zhang with pianist John Churchwell & on 22 March soprano Mikayla Sager, mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Beteag, & tenors Victor Cardamone & Edward Graves with pianist Marika Yasuda; the programs have not yet been announced.

There will be an International Women's Day Celebration of Holly Near (featuring Near herself as well as other singers) on 8 March at Freight & Salvage in Berkeley.

On 17 March at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the Friction Quartet & soprano Cara Gabrielson will perform Hugo Wolf's Mignon Lieder  (arranged by Otis Harriel), Michi Wianko's To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, Missy Mazzoli's Harp and Altar, & Noah Luna's The Highwayman (which was commissioned by the Quartet); the program will be repeated on 18 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Palo Alto.

Rosanne Cash will be at the SF Jazz Center with a Listening Party on 29 March & in performance on 30 - 31 March & 1 - 2 April.

Orchestral

On 1 - 2 March at Davies Hall, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in the SFS premiere of Gabriella Smith's Tumblebird Contrails, Salonen's Nyx, & the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto 3 with soloist Yuja Wang.

The SF Jazz Center presents Maria Schneider & her big-band Orchestra at Herbst Theater on 2 March, performing selections from her latest recording, Data Lords.

On 4 March at Heron Arts in San Francisco, One Found Sound performs Beethoven's Coriolan Overture, Quinn Mason's Reflection On A Memorial, & the world premiere of Herbert Franklin Mells's 1938 Symphony #1 in D Minor, part of the group's Herbert Franklin Mells Project.

Daniel Stewart leads the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in Gabriela Lena Frank's Apu: Tone Poem for Orchestra, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (with soloist Eunseo Oh, 2022 winner of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra Concerto Competition), & the Beethoven 5, & that's at Davies Hall on 5 March.

Cal Performances presents the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor Christian Thielemann in Zellerbach Hall for three separate programs: 7 March, Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht for string orchestra & Richard Strauss's Eine Alpensinfonie; 8 March, Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture & his Symphony 3, the Scottish, as well as the Brahms 2; & on 9 March, the Bruckner 8.

On 12 March at Herbst Theater in San Francisco, Urs Leonhardt Steiner leads the Golden Gate Symphony in the Ravel Piano Concerto in G (with soloist Kymry Esainko), the Beethoven 3: the Eroica, & the world premieres of Jason Gibbs's Foray for Orchestra & Michael Kimbell's Lacrimae Symphony.

Joseph Young leads the Oakland Symphony in Lera Auerbach's Icarus, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (with soloist Rubén Rengel), & selections from Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet (with participation from the Cal Shakes Theater Company), & that's 24 March at the Paramount.

Cal Performances presents the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, conducted from the violin by Daniel Hope, in Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Mendelssohn's Concerto for Violin & String Orchestra in D minor, & Max Richter's Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons in Zellerbach Hall on 26 March.

Philharmonia Baroque, led from the fortepiano by Kristian Bezuidenhout, will perform Mozart's Piano Concerto 20, his Symphony 33, as well as pieces by Joseph Martin Kraus & JC Bach on 25 - 26 March at First Church, Berkeley, 29 March at First United Methodist in Palo Alto, & 31 March at Herbst Theater in San Francisco.

Former Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas will lead the San Francisco Symphony in the Mahler 6 on 30 - 31 March & 1 April.

Chamber Music

On 5 March at Herbst Theater, San Francisco Chamber Music presents the trio of violinist Paul Huang, violinist Danbi Um, & pianist Amy Yang performing music by Fauré, Moszkowski, Bloch, Amy Barlowe, & Sarasate.

On 6 March at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, clarinetist Jeff Anderle will join wind octet Nomad Session in Jonathan Russell's Nomad Concerto & Black Dog by Scott McAllister (arranged by Stephanie Rickard); the concert is also an album-release party for Nomad Session's first disc.

On 7 March, students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music String & Piano Chamber department will perform works by Jonathan Bingham, Brahms, & Beethoven.

San Francisco Performances concludes this season's Saturday morning lecture/performance series, Music as a Mirror of Our World: Chamber Music at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, with musicologist Robert Greenberg & the Alexander String Quartet, on 11 March at Herbst Theater, this time centering on the UK & the music of Elgar & Vaughan Williams.

On 12 March at Old First Concerts, the Ives Collective will perform music by Grażnya Bacewicz, Amy Beach, & Dvořák.

Violinist Stella Chen & pianist Henry Kramer will perform pieces by Debussy, Schubert, Grieg, & Waxman for Chamber Music San Francisco on 14 March at Herbst Theater.

The Lang/Rainwater Project (William Lang, trombone, & Anne Rainwater, piano), dedicated to exploring & expanding the repertoire for trombone & piano, will perform works by Amy Beach, Alex Temple, Eli Greenhoe, Arvo Pärt, & others on 17 March at Old First Concerts.

On 19 March the Berkeley Symphony Chamber Series will be at the Piedmont Center for the Arts to perform pieces by Lili Boulanger, Astor Piazzolla, & Dvořák.

Cal Performances presents the Castalian String Quartet playing works by Haydn, Saariaho, & Schubert in Hertz Hall on 19 March.

San Francisco Performances presents violinist Nicola Benedetti, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich, & pianist Alexei Grynyuk performing trios by Schubert & Tchaikovsky on 22 March at Herbst Theater.

In Aftermath, soprano Heidi Moss, violinist Joel Pattinson, cellist Peter Myers, & pianist Paul Schrage examine the aftermath of 9/11 & the ensuing wars through music by Arson Fahim, William Harvey, & Ned Rorem, & that's on 24 March at Old First Concerts.

The Bernal Hill Players celebrate Forces of Nature for Old First Concerts on 26 March with music by Valerie Coleman, Jennifer Peringer, Toru Takemitsu, Davide Verotta, Lili Boulanger. Pauline Oliveros, Sarah Stiles, & Sally Davies.

Instrumental

Ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro will appear at the SF Jazz Center from 2 - 5 March.

On 10 March, the Asian Art Museum will present "a drum demonstration and concert with master musician Nishaant Singh playing the pakhawaj, an ancient barrel-shaped, two-headed drum. Rarely heard in performance in the United States, this drum forms the rhythmic backbone of Dhrupad, the oldest known vocal style of Indian classical music".

Cal Performances presents Zakir Hussain & Masters of Percussion in Zellerbach Hall on 11 March.

San Francisco Performances in association with the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts, presents guitarist Jiji on 11 March at Herbst Theater, where she will play pieces by Claudia Sessa, Albeniz, Frantz Casseus, Natalie Dietterich, Paganini, Michael Gilbertson (that one's a world premiere). Tania León, Krists Auznieks, & Gulli Björnsson.

At Old First Concerts on 11 March, pianist Gabriele Baldocci will perform works by Beethoven, David Winkler, Douglas Finch (the Winkler & Finch are American premieres), Michael Glenn Williams, & himself.

Chamber Music San Francisco presents pianist Angela Hewitt performing music by Scarlatti, Bach, & Brahms at Herbst Theater on 19 March.

The San Francisco Symphony will present pianist Alexander Malofeev in a solo recital at Davies Hall on 22 March, playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Mieczysław Weinberg's Piano Sonata 4, & Rachmaninoff's Piano Sonata 2.

The San Francisco Symphony presents pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in a solo recital at Davies Hall on 26 March, when he will perform Debussy's Préludes, Books 1 & 2.

Early / Baroque Music

The San Francisco Early Music Society presents a collaboration between Archetti Baroque Strings & Dance Through Time, tracing the influence of the music & movement of Spain's new world colonies on Spanish & then European court life, with music including works by Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, Tarquinio Merula, Vivaldi, Marin Marais, & Lully, & that's 3 March at First Presbyterian in Palo Alto, 4 March at First Church in Berkeley, & 5 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco.

Cal Performances presents The English Concert, led by Harry Bicket, joined by the Clarion Choir (Steven Fox, Artistic Director) in Handel's Solomon, with soloists Ann Hallenberg (mezzo-soprano), Miah Persson (soprano), Elena Villalón (soprano), Brandon Cedel (bass-baritone), James Way (tenor), & Niamh O’Sullivan (mezzo-soprano) on 5 March in Zellerbach Hall.

Pianist Neil Rutman will play Bach's Goldberg Variations for Noontime Concerts at Old Saint Mary's in San Francisco on 7 March.

Jeffrey Thomas leads the American Bach Soloists in A Musical Feast, featuring festive works by Georg Muffat. Maurice Greene, Telemann, Vivaldi, & Bach, & you can hear it on 10 March at Saint Stephen's in Belvedere, 11 March at Saint Mark's Episcopal in Berkeley, 12 March at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco, & 13 March at the Davis Community Church in Davis.

The San Francisco Symphony presents violinist Hilary Hahn in an all-Bach solo recital at Davies Hall on 12 March, when she will perform the Sonata #1 in G minor, BWV 1001, the Partita #1 in B minor, BWV 1002, & the Partita #2 in D minor, BWV 1004.

As part of its ongoing series Jews & Music, Philharmonia Baroque presents Diaspora: Jewish Music of Longing & Celebration, led by Jeannette Sorrell, on 15 - 16 March at the Taube Atrium Theater in San Francisco & 17 March at Bing Concert Hall at Stanford.

On 20 March, the Cantata Collective, led by for the occasion by Nicholas McGegan, will celebrate Bach's 338th birthday with a performance of his mighty Mass in  B Minor, with soloists Sherezade Panthaki (soprano), Rhianna Cockrell (alto), Thomas Cooley (tenor), & Paul Max Tipton (bass) at First Congregational Cburch in Berkeley. On 19 March there will be an afternoon symposium with performances held at the Shattuck Plaza Hotel in Berkeley; the symposium is free but you must make a reservation by e-mailing bachrsvp@gmail.com. 

Modern / Contemporary Music

On 4 March at the Center for New Music, Roxanne Nesbitt & Ben Brown play symbiotic instruments (which are a collection of resonant ceramic objects made by Nesbitt; in addition, she will play the piano & Brown the drums).

On 11 March at the Center for New Music, Jim Haynes, Joshua Churchill, & Konrad Steiner will present The Decoration of Hard Time, exploring corrosion & decay in sound & image.

At Old First Concerts on 19 March, pianist Ann DuHamel offers Prayers for a Feverish Planet: New Music About Climate Change, featuring pieces by Erick Tapia, Karen Lemon, Frank Horvat, Laura Schwendinger, Chris Williams, Darío Duarte, Ian Dicke, Daniel Blinkhorn, Clifton Callender, Alex Burtzos, & Gunter Gaupp.

Aine Nakamura & Srayamurtikanti will perform solo works & a new collaborative work at the Center for New Music on 24 March.

Jazz & Folk

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band brings Pass It On: 60th Anniversary Musical Celebration to Cal Performances & Zellerbach Hall on 2 March.

San Francisco Performances in association with the OMNI Foundation for the Performing Arts present Dreamers' Circus (Nikolaj Busk, piano; Rune Tonsgaard Sørensen, fiddle; Ale Carr, guitar) at Herbst Theater on 3 March.

On 5 March at the Center for New Music, Chris Brown, Ben Davis, & Marshall Trammell will celebrate the release of their double CD Tremble Trove.

Saxophone & clarinet player Anat Cohen will be a resident Artistic Director at the SF Jazz Center this month: on 9 March she teams with pianist Fred Hersch; on 10 March, she is joined by guitarists Gilad Hekselman, Romero Lubambo, & Sheryl Bailey; on 11 March, she plays in a quartet, including long-time members Gilad Hekselman (guitar) & Joe Martin (bass), joined for this performance by Joe Dyson on drums; & on 12 March, she will be joined by a string section for selections from the Pan-American Songbook.

Singer & harpist Destiny Muhammad plays a tribute to Dorothy Ashby & Alice Coltrane at the SF Jazz Center on 10 March.

Kyiv’s DakhaBrakha celebrates Ukrainian culture old & new at the SF Jazz Center on 13 - 14 March.

Colm Ó Riain's St.Patrick's Day Extravaganza, exploring connections among Irish & other musical traditions, will take place on, of course, Saint Patrick's Day, 17 March, at the Great Star Theater in San Francisco.

Cal Performances presents jazz sextet Artemis – Music Director Renee Rosnes on piano, Ingrid Jensen on trumpet, Alexa Tarantino on alto saxophone & flute, Nicole Glover on tenor saxophone, Noriko Ueda on bass, & Allison Miller on drums – in Zellerbach Hall on 24 March.

Sammy Miller & the Congregation bring their self-described "joyful jazz" to the SF Jazz Center from 23 to 26 March.

Dance

As part of its Full series, on 7 March the Berkeley Art Museum presents Berkeley Ballet Theater & Post:ballet in excerpts from Still Be Here, a new collaboration featuring recordings from the Kronos Quartet's Fifty for the Future project.

The San Francisco Ballet has two programs starting this month: a mixed program, The Colors of Dance, runs 14 to 19 March & consists of 7 for Eight (music by Bach, choreography by Helgi Tomasson), Colorforms (music by Steve Reich, choreography by Myles Thatcher), & Blake Works I (music by James Blake, choreography & scenic design by William Forsythe); & then Cinderella, running 31 March through 8 April (music by Prokofiev, choreography by Christopher Wheeldon).

The Oakland Ballet Company & the Oakland Asian Cultural Center present the Dancing Moons Festival, featuring the world premiere of Exquisite Corpse, choreography by Phil Chan, Seyong Kim, & Elaine Kudo, based on the surrealist parlor game, & also featuring Phil Chan's Amber Waves, Caili Quan's Layer Upon Layer, & Ballet des Porcelaines or The Teapot Prince by Phil Chan (original 1739; reimagined 2021). & that's 16 - 18 March at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center on 9th Street & 7 - 8 April at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco.

ODC/Dance gives us Dance Downtown, with two different programs: Program A features Something About a Nightingale (choreography by Brenda Way), Witness (a world premiere, with choreography by Amy Seiwert), & Triangulating Euclid (choreography by Brenda Way, KT Nelson, & Kate Weare), & Program B features Impulse (choreography by Dexandro Montalvo), Collision, Collapse and a Coda (a world premiere, with choreography by Brenda Way), &, again, Triangulating Euclid; & that's 29 March to 2 April at the Yerba Buena Center.

If you're interested in early dance, please note Dance Through Time listed above under Early / Baroque Music.

Visual Arts

Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence opens at the de Young Museum on 18 March & runs through 15 October.

Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in Art opens at the Asian Art Museum on 31 March & runs through 10 July.

Cinematic

Here's what's happening this month at the Berkeley Art Musem / Pacific Film Archive: as part of his residency at UC-Berkeley, we have Orchestrating Time: The Films of William Kentridge running from 9 March to 2 April; Pioneers of Queer Cinema runs from 3 March to 3 May; Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cinema of Now runs from 10 March to 12 May; filmmaker Billy Woodberry will appear in person on 22 March with And when I die, I won’t stay dead & on 29 March with Bless Their Little Hearts; on 18 March, as part of a UC-Berkeley conference, we have Monique Wittig: Twenty Years Later / Monique Wittig: Vingt ans après, presenting two features responding to Wittig's novel Les Guérillères; Lizzie Borden’s New York Feminisms Trilogy runs from 17 to 19 March; & filmmaker Kelly Reichardt will appear in person from 24 to 31 March, with four of her films.

The Roxie in San Francisco presents The Buster Keaton Follies on 7 March, which, unusually for a Keaton retrospective, centers on work he did after his great silent films.

Enjoy!

Museum Monday 2023/8

 

detail of The Long Journey by Joan Brown, part of the special exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (closing on 12 March)

Friday Photo 2023/7

 

City Hall, Oakland, California

SFCM: Baroque Ensemble concert

Last Sunday I went to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, to hear the winners of the Baroque Ensemble Concerto Competition doing their thing.

This was also my first time in the Conservatory's new building, a high-rise on Van Ness Avenue. The Barbro Osher Recital Hall is at the top of the building, a clean-lined room whose glass walls look out on panoramic views of San Francisco. It was lovely to see the seagulls wheel around during the music, though one did hit the glass with a thud. There is a disadvantage to the hall & its height, which is that getting up there is not a problem as people straggle in by ones & twos & threes, but when everyone leaves at the end there is inevitably a crowd that needs to wait for the elevator.

The Baroque Ensemble (headed by Corey Jamason & Elisabeth Reed) was all strings plus harpsichord. We had five concertos: in the first half, one each by Boismortier, John Garth (a British composer new to me), & Vivaldi, & in the second half, another one by Vivaldi & one by Bach. I was interested to hear the Boismortier & Garth, as they were less familiar to me, but (based on the music; this is not a comment on the performances) it was clear why Vivaldi & Bach are the better-known names; their pieces just sparked & dazzled in a way that outshone the more sedate elegance of the more obscure two.

The Boismortier (Concerto for Violoncello in D Major, Opus 26 #6, which is, according to the program note for this piece by Stella Hannock, "recognized as the first solo concerto for any instrument written by a French composer") featured Octavio Mujica on baroque cello; the Garth (Concerto for Violoncello in D Major, Opus 1, #1, & Isabel Tannenbaum's program note for this piece tells us it "is considered to be the first of its kind written by an English composer") featured Kyle Stachnik on baroque cello; & the Vivaldi that closed the first half, the Concerto for Two Violins in A Minor, RV 523, featured Annemarie Schubert & Eliana Estrada on baroque violins.

After the intermission, we had our second helping of Vivaldi, which this time was the Concerto for Violoncello in D Minor, RV 407, featuring Hasan Abualhaj on baroque cello, followed by the final piece, probably the best-known of the lot, Bach's Concerto for Harpsichord in D Minor, BWV 1052, featuring Yunyi Ji on harpsichord.

The soloists played as part of the Ensemble throughout, & there was a nice sense of camaraderie throughout the afternoon. As noted in the program book (the other two write-ups were by Samuel C Nedel for the Vivaldis & Clayton Luckadoo for the Bach) the pieces kept to the fast-slow-fast pattern of three movements that Vivaldi popularized for the concerto form, & it may seem as if there was a lot of cello going on, but it's a tribute to composers & performers that the music never lagged or seemed rote. As the last notes of Ji's harpsichord glittered down upon up, the ensemble joined the full house in applause all around for each other.

Museum Monday 2023/7

 

the diagonal of May 25, 1963 by Dan Flavin, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Friday Photo 2023/6

 

a redwood tree, Castro Valley, California

Museum Monday 2023/6

 

detail of Joan Brown's Colony Hotel Beach, Montego Bay, Jamaica, currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as part of the special Joan Brown exhibit, running through 12 March

Gershwin & Kahane at the San Francisco Symphony

The San Francisco Symphony last Thursday gave us the first night of a two-night stand featuring Conrad Tao as soloist in the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F as well as Gabriel Kahane's emergency shelter intake form, an exploration of homelessness & inequality in America, so as a fanboy of both Tao & Kahane I went to Davies Hall for the first time since the pre-pandemic years.

Tao, a composer as well as pianist, threw himself into the Gershwin, which he obviously knows inside out (he played mostly with his eyes shut). The piece is not as familiar as Rhapsody in Blue but is in the same vein, with that piquant Gershwin combination of wistful romance & ultimately melancholy exuberance, all caught breathtakingly in this performance. I thought we were going to get an encore, but we did not (though I heard later that Tao played & sang Billy Strayhorn's Lush Life on Friday, which sadly we of the large & enthusiastic Thursday crowd were not given).

After the intermission came the Kahane piece. He is best known as a songwriter but the nearly hour-long emergency shelter intake form showed how well he can sustain a longer work, involving multiple forces (soloists & chorus as well as orchestra). The piece provides thoughtful, evocative, & sometimes comic answers to the bureaucratic boilerplate questions of the titular form ("Where did you stay last night?" "Have you received any income in the past thirty days?" "Have you ever been evicted?"). The answers are provided not only by a soloist (the elegant mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran) but by a Chorus of Inconvenient Statistics (Holcombe Waller, Kristen Toedtman, & Kahane himself), which chimes in with financial/political background, which is not as dry as it sounds; Kahane's text is often pointed, & some of these sections, like the "Can you hear the bull market roar?" refrain of Section XI, "A Brief History of the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis" are almost distressingly catchy, capturing well the heady appeal of boom times (& providing a thematic link to the Jazz Age Gershwin).

The soloists are amplified but the chorus (made up in these performances of the Skywatchers Ensemble & the Community Music Center Singers, led by Martha Rodríguez-Salazar), which enters at the end, is not; conductor Edwin Outwater kept all these forces balanced (something that doesn't always happen in Davies Hall when amplification is involved) & pulsing forward. The music ranges widely in mood; the opening lines ("What brings you here? / What happened? / Where did you sleep last night?"), smoothly & yearningly sung by Moran, might almost signal a work about an intimate romance. The instrumentation includes not only the usual symphonic suspects but also guitar, accordion, tin cans, & more, & Kahane's music is as adept at the poetic, the comic, & the heart-breaking as his words. Underlying it all is a generous impulse to resist the demonization of "the homeless", & there's always the thrill of experiencing a major new work by an artist I admire so much. So why did this piece leave me feeling dissatisfied?

The first pronouncement of the Chorus of Inconvenient Statistics is "We believe that the lifeblood of art is – How shall we put it? / Ambiguity", but that's exactly what I felt was missing. As I said, I admire the impulse to resist demonizing "the homeless", but there's an opposite trap which is not avoided here, & that's to portray them purely as victims – I mean in the sense of the perfect or ideal, the blameless, victim. Drugs, mental illness, really stupid life choices, aggression towards others are very fleetingly touched on in the work, & I'm not blaming, judging, or dismissing people who suffer from any of these things, but by eliding them from the world drawn here, we end up with a group of what the Victorians would have called "the deserving poor", the portrayal of whom verges at times on sentimentality – & that's not necessarily a bad thing; sentimentality is just heightening our pity towards those who deserve pity, & from pity can come action.

But it's also true that this sort of categorical compassion can lead to the overly easy satire of other groups, such as the NIMBY types portrayed in Section VI, "Certainly We Can All Agree"; there were appreciative chuckles from the audience at Davies Hall, but I seriously doubt any of them would be willing to live next to a halfway house, let alone a full-on encampment of the unhoused. & it's the NIMBY population, among others, you need to persuade in order for effective policies to gain traction, & lightly mocking & dismissing their concerns about having "our windows barred" is not going to win them over.

& that's why, I think, it matters that the more problematic, troublesome examples of the unhoused among us are not present in this particular work, which admittedly is already taking on several vast & intractable topics. But how can the audience connect what it just felt in the concert hall with what it experiences as soon as it leaves the hall, & how can political action be sustained in the face of this disparity?

The audience was very enthusiastic after Thursday's performance, but when we leave Davies & head to the Civic Center BART station or a parking garage, how are we going to make & sustain the connection between the moving stories of the people we have just heard about & the people we're crossing the street to avoid? (Any downtown SF arts administrator who claims not to be concerned about how the homeless population affects attendance at their expensive entertainments is, I will politely suggest, lying.) The hearts opened up by this work are going to slam right back shut in the face of the familiar & daily gantlet of hostile threats, aggressive panhandling, or even just offensive smells & noises. These too are part of the total situation.

I've been reading a lot of Dorothy Day lately, & one theme that emerged for me is that she didn't help people because they deserved it or because it made her feel virtuous to do so or anything like that; many of the people she helped were, & she knew this perfectly well & acknowledged it, in every sense hopeless: difficult, abrasive, dishonest, even dangerous, & certainly ungrateful. She persevered because of an overwhelming religious conviction – these people are part of the body of Christ, & she is here to serve that body – & whether you share that conviction, or some variant of it, or are just concerned about social stability or urban livability, you will need to make the leap to providing help to people who don't, in many eyes, "deserve" help. Unless you acknowledge that – that people can be undeserving, incorrigible, repulsive, but still deserving of generous assistance – you're not going to sustain the political will necessary to provide such help, or to persuade people to join you in working for it.

I say all this with great respect not only for what Kahane has achieved here, but the generous impulse underlying it: we live in a profoundly sick, mean-spirited country with twisted priorities, & making individuals out of its victims is valuable. But sustained action, action acceptable to a working majority of any country, can't shy away from the less touching aspects of this problem (this "problem"! this population, these people, these individuals).

I would encourage anyone interested in this piece to buy a copy of the original recording & explore the work for themselves.

UPDATE: For another perspective, here is Lisa Hirsch's review in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as her blog entry.

Friday Photo 2023/5

 

Latham Square, Oakland

(here's the link to another view, from last week)