September is still some sort of semi-official opening of the Performance Season, which weirdly coincides with the traditional school year, but increasingly it all just blurs into a year-round whirl. Here are a couple of brief reminders: the San Francisco Conservatory of Music has a great series of concerts, many of them free, & you can keep an eye on their on-going schedule here, & the Symphony Rush Ticket phone number is 415-503-5577, so catch some concerts with the great Esa-Pekka Salonen before the current Symphony Board burns the place to the ground & absconds to South America with the insurance money.
Theatrical
The African-American Shakespeare Company presents From One to Another: Homage to the Legacy of Maya Angelou, a new choreopoem by Leelee Jackson, directed by Devin A Cunningham, with music by DeVante’ Winn & choreography by Ashli Fisher, & it can be seen at different San Francisco libraries: on 24 August at the Bayview Branch, 7 September at the Potrero Hill branch, 14 September at the Western Addition branch, & 19 September at the Main Library.
Crowded Fire presents Shipping & Handling by Star Finch, directed by Lisa Marie Rollins & Leigh Rondon-Davis, a play-in-reverse that deals with "our historical expectations around Black plays" as well as AI, & that runs from 10 August to 7 September at the Magic Theater.
Berkeley Playhouse opens with the popular Broadway hit The Prom, with book & lyrics by Chad Beguelin, book (more book? book additions?) by Bob Martin, music by Matthew Sklar, co-directed & co-choreographed by Megan McGrath & Christina Lazo, music direction by Daniel Alley, & that runs from 6 September through 13 October.
Ray of Light gives us Legally Blonde: The Musical, music & lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe & Nell Benjamin, book by Heather Hach, directed by Phaedra Tillery-Boughton with co-director ShawnJ West, starring Majesty Scott as Elle Wood, & that's 7 - 29 September at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco.
Cal Shakes in Orinda presents As You Like It, directed by Elizabeth Carter, from 12 to 29 September. They are also presenting Mother Lear, a roughly hour-long version of King Lear created, adapted, & performed by Ava Roy & Courtney Walsh, concerning "an irascible middle-aged scholar with dementia who communicates with her caretaker daughter using only the text of King Lear as the two struggle with aging, love and their own balance of power"; be warned that the "performance is our Act One and a facilitated discussion with the audience follows as Act Two", though of course your view of a "facilitated discussion with the audience" might be more favorable than mine. You could always leave at intermission. Mother Lear is playing 15, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25, & 29 September & 1 - 2 October.
ACT presents Noel Coward's Private Lives, directed by KJ Sanchez (& relocated to tango-dancing Argentina), at the Toni Rembe Theater from 12 September to 6 October.
Berkeley Rep presents Mexodus, a "live-looping musical, composed in real-time" by Brian Quijada & Nygel D. Robinson & telling "stories of the Underground Railroad that led south into Mexico", directed by David Mendizábal, & that runs from 13 September through 20 October.
Brian Copeland's popular one-person show, Not a Genuine Black Man, returns to The Marsh Berkeley for one performance on 13 September. Copeland also revives another of his solo shows, The Waiting Period, about the mandatory 10-day waiting period before he could receive a gun, with which he intended to commit suicide due to depression, & that's at The Marsh San Francisco on 15 September, 20 October, & 3 November, & The March Berkeley on 22 September, 6 October, 24 November, & 1 & 15 December.
Reckless Son, directed by Richard Hoehler & written & performed by singer / songwriter Matt Butler & "inspired by his journey performing over 100 concerts in jails and prisons across the country", will play at The Marsh San Francisco on 17 September.
The Lorraine Hansberry Theater presents a "rolling world premiere" of the choreo-poem The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body by Lisa B Thompson, directed by Margo Hall, at the Fort Mason Center from 19 September to 6 October.
New Conservatory Theater Center opens its season with Ride the Cyclone, a musical about a semi-fatal roller coaster ride & the possibility of another life, with book, music, & lyrics by Jacob Richmond & Brooke Maxwell, directed & choreographed by Stephanie Temple, musical direction by Ben Prince, & t hat opens 20 September & runs through 20 October.
San Francisco Playhouse opens its season with the comedy The Play That Goes Wrong, by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields, & Jonathan Sayer, directed by Susi Damilano, opening on 21 September & running through 9 November.
Choir Boy, written by Tarell Alvin McCraney & directed by Darryl V Jones, about a queer Black youth who leads his prep school choir, opens on 24 September at Shotgun Players at the Ashby Stage & runs through 20 October.
The Oakland Theater Project presents that modern classic, Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Parts 1 & 2, directed by Michael Socrates Moran, from 27 September to 27 October at Marin Shakes in San Rafael.
Talking
City Arts & Lectures presents historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose daily Letters from an American chronicles & analyzes the chaos around us, will be interviewed by Steven Winn on 19 September at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco.
Operatic
The big operatic event this month is the opening of the San Francisco Opera's season; abbreviated though it is, there are some powerhouse works coming up. It is too bad that they've reverted to sacrificing an actual opera to the opening night crowd, rather than giving them a shorter concert of famous arias before the party the audience is mostly there for, but so it goes. This year's victim is Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, conducted by Eun Sun Kim & directed by Leo Muscato, featuring Michael Fabiano as King Gustav III / Riccardo (so, clearly not the "Boston" version), Lianna Haroutounian as Amelia, Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Count Anckarström / Renato, Mei Gui Zhang as Oscar, & Judit Kutasi as Ulrica; performances are 6. 11. 15, 18, 21, 24, & 27 September (6 September is Opening Night, so use your discretion).
San Francisco Opera's second offering of the season is The Handmaid's Tale by Poul Ruders (music) & Paul Bentley (libretto), based of course on the celebrated dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood, conducted by Karen Kamensek & directed by John Fulljames. featuring Irene Roberts as Offred, Lindsay Ammann as Serena Joy, Sarah Cambidge as Aunt Lydia, & John Relyea as the Commander; performances are 14, 17, 20, 22, 26, & 29 September & 1 October.
San Francisco Opera's annual free concert, Opera in the Park, conducted by Eun Sun Kim, is 8 September in Golden Gate Park; not my kind of thing (people are exceptionally awful at outdoor concerts), but, YMMV, as they say.
Opera San José presents The Magic Flute, which they describe as "family-friendly", & I'm not sure what that means in this context, conducted by Alma Deutscher, directed by Brad Dalton, featuring WooYoung Yoon as Tamino, Ricardo José Rivera as Papageno, Emily Misch as the Queen of the Night, Melissa Sondhi as Pamina, & Younggwang Park as Sarastro, & performances are 14, 15,20, 22, 27, & 29 September.
Livermore Valley Opera presents Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment (described by them, as is Opera San José's Magic Flute, as "family-friendly"), conducted by Alex Katsman; performances are 28 - 29 September & 5 - 6 October.
On 14 September at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, the Wagner Society of Northern California will help prepare you for the San Francisco Opera's upcoming run of Tristan with Tristan und Isolde: Wagner’s Most Subversive Opera?, a lecture by Simon Williams.
Choral
Chanticleer explores "music's power throughout the ages" in Without a Song, a program including motets by Francesco Landini & Orlando di Lasso, a new work by Ayanna Woods, & a new arrangement by Stacey Gibbs of the jazz standard Without a Song, & you can hear all that on 14 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 15 September at Saint John's Lutheran in Sacramento, 17 September at First Church in Berkeley, 19 September at Mission Santa Clara, &20 September at Mount Tamalpais United Methodist in Mill Valley.
Vocalists
Cynthia Erivo joins the San Francisco Symphony, led by Esa-Pekka Salonen, on 14 September, & in addition to Erivo's set, the orchestra will play two pieces by Jessie Montgomery, Starburst & Strum.
On 29 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, their Historical Performance department will collaborate with their Studio for the Early American Musical to perform songs by Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Karl Hoschna, Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, Kay Swift, Jay Gorney, Rodgers & Hart, Cole Porter, & Frank Tours; performers include Alexandra Santon on violin & Corey Jamason on piano, with sopranos Taylor See & Camryn Finn, mezzo-sopranos Cathy Cook, Leah Finn, & Katherine Growdon, tenor Brian Thorsett, & baritone Matthew Worth.
Orchestral
The All San Francisco Celebration at the San Francisco Symphony will take place on 12 September, when Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the orchestra & harpist Katherine Siochi in Sibelius's Karelia Suite, Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite #1, Debussy's Danses sacrée et profane, & Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé, Suite #2.
On 19 - 21 September, Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in Verdi's Requiem, with soloists Leah Hawkins (soprano), Karen Cargill (mezzo-soprano), Mario Chang (tenor), & Peixin Chen (bass, replacing the previously announced Eric Owens, who withdrew for personal reasons); I would have thought the Requiem could stand on its own, but three pieces by Gordon Getty will also be performed: the Intermezzo from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Saint Christopher, & The Old Man in the Snow. The Symphony describes the Requiem as "Crude as a gut punch, tender as a kiss, . . . " & here's a note to whoever writes these things: crude is not the word you want there. Visceral (used later in the sentence), powerful, mighty, majestic, terrifying, forceful . . . but crude? No, no, no. Nope. And again, no. (I suppose I should be grateful they didn't call it impactful.)
Donato Cabrera leads the California Symphony in Louise Farrenc’s Overture #2 & the Beethoven 9 with soloists Laquita Mitchell, Kelley O’Connor, Nicholas Phan, & Sidney Outlaw at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek on 21 - 22 September.
Although it is preceded at the San Francisco Symphony this month by a concert featuring music from Studio Ghibli (not listed here because all performances are sold out), the "All San Francisco" concert, an evening with Cynthia Erivo (listed under Vocalists), & the Verdi Requiem plus gobbets of Getty, there is an actual official Opening Gala concert on 25 September, with pianist Lang Lang as the flashy star soloist, playing Saint-Saëns's Piano Concerto #2 as well as his The Carnival of the Animals (for which he will be joined by pianist Gina Alice); the program will also include selections from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
The San Francisco Symphony closes its month on 27 - 28 September with Esa-Pekka Salonen leading the world premiere of an SF Symphony commission, a French baroque-inspired Piano Concerto by Nico Muhly, with soloist Alexandre Tharaud; the program also includes Hindemith's Ragtime (Well-Tempered) , Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537 as arranged by Elgar, & Hindemith's Symphony, Mathis der Maler.
On 27 - 28 September David Milnes leads the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra at Hertz Hall in Push by Trevor Weston, As Thus by Wang Dan Hong (Cassi Chen, guzheng soloist), & the Tchaikovsky 4.
Jessica Bejarano leads the San Francisco Philharmonic in Shostakovich's Festive Overture, Tchaikovsky's The Tempest, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto #1 in D Major, & Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty Entr’acte #18 for violin solo with orchestra; the featured violinist will be Cordula Merks & that's 28 September at Herbst Theater.
On 28 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Edwin Outwater leads the SFCM Orchestra in Richard Strauss's Don Juan & his Vier Lieder, Opus 27 (with soprano Alissa Goretsky), John Coltrane's Alabama, as arranged by Carlos Simon, & the 1947 version of Stravinsky's Petrushka.
On 29 September at Herbst Theater, Pete Nowlen leads the San Francisco Pride Band (until recently the San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Freedom Band) in Portraits of the Americas, a program featuring music from the Squamish First Nation of British Columbia, the Sephardic Jewish community in Brazil, Mexican dances, & more, including two world premieres: One Magnificent Light by current Composer-in-Residence Mattea Williams & Eyes To Look Otherwise, a new concerto by Juan Sebastián Cardona Ospina, featuring soprano saxophonist Michael Hernandez.
Chamber Music
Here's this month's line-up at the Noontime Concert series at Old Saint Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco: on 3 September, Ensemble SF will perform Mozart's Piano Quartet in G Minor & Mel Bonis' Piano Quartet #1 in B-flat Major, Opus 69; on 10 September, violinist Maya Ramchandran with pianist Miles Graber will perform Schumann's Violin Sonata #1 in A minor, Opus 105 & Faurè's Violin Sonata #1 in A Major, Opus 13; on 17 September, piano duo N Blanco Y Negro with violinist/violist Jennifer Redondas will perform a program of Cuban music; & on 24 September, pianist Mark Valenti will play Estampes: Pagodas, Evening in the Granada, Gardens in the Rain by Debussy, the Andante from Prokofiev's Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 84, & Beethoven's Sonata #28 in A Major, Opus 101.
On 1 September at Old First Concerts, Lieder Alive! in collaboration with the San Francisco International Piano Festival presents mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich & pianists Gwendolyn Mok & Jeffrey LaDeur performing Fauré's La Bonne Chanson, Debussy's Épigraphes Antiques, & Florent Schmitt's Trois Rapsodies.
On 9 September at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Margaret Halbig of the Collaborative Piano Department has arranged a program including Rachmoninoff's Valse & Romance for 6 Hands (with pianists Halbig, Andrew King, & Natasha Kislenko); Jennifer Higdon's Little River Songs (with Halbig, mezzo-soprano Melinda Becker, cellist Megan Chartier) Stjepan Šulek's Sonata for Trombone and Piano, "Vox Gabrieli" (with Halbig & trombonist Timothy Higgins), & Bartók's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (with pianists Halbig & Natasha Kislenko, & percussionists Zubin Hathi & Elizabeth Hall).
The Hillside Club in Berkeley presents the New Esterházy Quartet (Kati Kyme & Lisa Weiss, violins; Anthony Martin, viola; William Skeen, cello; joined for this series by violist Cynthia Keiko Black & oboist Marc Schachman) performing the complete viola quintets of Mozart in a 3-concert series: 11, 13, & 15 September.
N Blanco y Negro Piano Duo (Mirta Gómez & Sahily Cánovas), with special guest violinist Jennifer Redondas, will perform pieces by Dvořák, Schubert, Fauré, Jason McCauley, Carlota Garriga, Fazil Say, Rachmaninoff, Piazzolla, & José White Lafitte at Old First Concerts on 20 September.
San Francisco Symphony musicians will perform a chamber music program at Davies on 29 September, featuring Café Damas for Violin, Viola, and Bass by Kinan Azmeh, the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K 452 by Mozart, the Sonatine en trio for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano by Florent Schmitt, & the Piano Quartet, Opus 47 by Schumann.
Players from the Berkeley Symphony present Advocates and Influencers, a program consisting of Clara Schumann's Piano Trio in G minor, Opus 17, Caroline Shaw's Concerto for Piano and Strings, & Joaquin Turina's Piano Quartet in A minor, Opus 67; the program is said to be "curated" by violist Darcy Rindt, which I guess means she selected the pieces, & you can hear them on 29 September at the Piedmont Center for the Arts.
Instrumental
On 29 September in Hertz Hall, Cal Performances presents violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious with pianist Andrew Goodridge in Influences, a program featuring Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin as well as Mozart's Violin Sonata #21 in E minor & Beethoven's Kreutzer sonata.
Early / Baroque Music
The Cantata Collective continues its series of free concerts surveying Bach's cantatas at Saint Mary Magdalen's in Berkeley on 1 September, with Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 & Wachet! betet! betet! wachet! BWV 70, featuring soloists Tonia D’Amelio (soprano), Christine Brandes (alto), Derek Chester (tenor), & Ben Kazez (bass), & trumpeter Dominic Favia, who will be performing not only on the natural trumpet but also the tromba da tirarsi or "slide trumpet".
Modern / Contemporary Music
The Hillside Club in Berkeley hosts Celebrating Schoenberg, a 5-part lecture series run by Jonathan Khuner with selections performed by Earplay New Chamber Music Ensemble, The Left Coast Ensemble, Voices of Silicon Valley. & vocalists Nikki Einfeld & Charlotte Khuner (additional insights will be provided by lecturers Matilda Hofman, Bruce Bennett, & Cyril Deaconoff); the musical selections include the Opus 11 Piano Pieces, the Hanging Gardens song cycle, the String Trio, Pierrot Lunaire, & two religious choral pieces: Peace on Earth & Three Thousand Years. The schedule is: 1 September, Piano Works; 7 September, Songs; 15 September, Chamber Music; 22 September, Choral Works; & 29 September, Cabaret. You can attend all or some; tickets are here.
The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players present the second annual ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer Program Concert at Herbst Theater on 12 September; this year the featured composers bringing us fresh new chamber works are Laura Cetilia, Sofia Ouyang, Luca Robadey, Ethan Solodad, Chawin Temsittichok, & Max Vinetz.
Pianist Thomas Schultz will play selections from his 40 years of working with composer Hyo-shin Na at the Center for New Music on 14 September.
The annual Other Minds Music Festival takes place at the Brava Theater in San Francisco on 25 - 28 September; each concert is preceded by a panel discussion or workshop; nights 1 & 2 feature the world premiere of Trimpin's The Cello Quartet, featuring cellist Lori Goldston & circus artists Joel Herzfeld, Bri Crabtree, & Calvin Kai Ku, with choreography by Margaret Fisher; night 3 features Annea Lockwood's Becoming Air (with trumpeter Nate Wooley) & Into the Vanishing Point (with piano/percussion duo Yarn/Wire) along with Jan Martin Smørdal's Both sides. Now (with Yarn/Wire); night 4 features Annea Lockwood's RCSC (with pianist Sarah Cahill), drummer Marshall Trammell & saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh performing We Say NO To Genocide, & IMA (Amma Ateria, electronics; Nava Dunkelman, percussion) performing The Flowers Die in Burning Fire.
The annual Darius Milhaud Concert will take place at Mills College on 27 September, featuring pianist Brett Carson & performances of Lou Harrison's Homage to Milhaud, Milhaud's Le printemps, Volume 1, Opus 25, Steed Cowart's Blackberry Winter, Sidney Corbett's From the Garden, Lou Harrison's New York Waltzes, Milhaud's Le printemps, Volume 2, Opus 66, Zeena Parkins' LACE, & Erik Satie's Embryons desséchés.
On 27 September in Zellerbach Hall, Cal Performances presents soprano Julia Bullock & pianist Conor Hanick, with choreographer-dancers Bobbi Jene Smith & Or Schraiber, in a staged version of Messiaen's song cycle Harawi, directed by Zack Winokur.
Jazz
Ethan Iverson "Plays and Talks about the History of Jazz Piano" at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland on 1 September.
The Mike Greensill Trio (Greensill on piano, Ruth Davies on bass, Noel Jewkes with the saxes), with vocalist Gale Terminello, will be at Old First Concerts on 8 September for their annual trip through the Great American Songbook.
San Francisco Performances has a new series taking place in the Presidio Theater, & it opens on 28 September with The Hot Club of San Francisco giving you the jazz styles of 1930s Paris.
Dance
The Alonzo King LINES Ballet presents a world premiere set to the music of Alice Coltrane & a revival of King's dance to Ravel's Mother Goose Suite, as seen last spring at the San Francisco Symphony (it is not a direct retelling of any fairytales but instead an evocation of mood through movement; I enjoyed it); that's at the Yerba Buena Center from 26 to 29 September.
Smuin Contemporary Ballet presents Dance Series 1, featuring Renaissance (choreography by Amy Seiwert to music performed by Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble), the world premiere of ByCHANCE (choreography by Jennifer Archibald), & The Last Glass (choreography by Matthew Neenan to music by the indie-rock band Beirut), & that's 13 - 15 September at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 27 - 28 September at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, & 11 - 20 October at the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason in San Francisco.
Art Means Painting
At the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Nicki Green: Firmament, the artist's first museum solo exhibit, shows "new and existing artworks in ceramic, installation, fiber, and more" & that opens 5 September & runs through 2 February 2025; Looted. a multimedia installation by Dorota Mytych (Poland), Jessica Houston (Canada), Marcia Teusink (UK), & Tracy Grubbs (USA), explores the "art, memory, politics, and loss" of Polish-owned paintings looted by the Nazis, & that also opens 5 September & runs through 27 July 2025.
A couple of new shows are opening at SFMOMA: Table Manners, exploring the ways design affects our relationship to food & mealtimes, opens 14 September & runs through May 2025; Consuelo Kanaga: Catch the Spirit exploring the work of the pioneering photojournalist, opens on 28 September & runs through 9 February 2025.
Hallyu! The Korean Wave, exploring South Korea's current world-wide influence on art, music, film, & fashion, opens at the Asian Art Museum on 27 September & runs through 6 January 2025.
Cinematic
BAM/PFA is launching its autumn film series:
* from 6 September to 3 October, Cities & Cinema: Los Angeles explores that elusive city not only through Hollywood eyes but through those of expatriate & marginalized observers;
* Special Screenings includes some wonderful films that don't fall into a regular series, such as the new restoration of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai & a lecture by PFA founding director Sheldon Renan on The Early Days of the Pacific Film Archive, followed by a screening of the archive's print of one of my favorite films, Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide (this presentation is in collaboration with the Berkeley Historical Society & Museum, whose current display on Berkeley and the Movies runs through 21 September;
* Alternative Visions, BAMPFA's annual showing of avant-garde & experimental films, runs 11 September through 20 November;
* Silent Cinema Pioneers: From Alice Guy-Blaché to Lois Weber, exploring "four pioneering directors of the silent era: Alice Guy-Blaché, Louis Feuillade, Cecil B. DeMille, and Lois Weber" (yes, DeMille when he was creating stylish shockers rather than gargantuan Biblical epics) runs from 14 through 25 September, & though the films will be familiar to aficionados of silent cinema, they are all worth seeing again;
* the month ends with Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy on 28 - 29 September.
At the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, you can catch that wonderful film The Maltese Falcon on 4 -5 September, & on 13 - 14 September you can see the notorious Caligula, & I'm guessing this is the new restoration I've heard about, though the website doesn't actually say that.
No comments:
Post a Comment