Monday, March 18, 2024

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Bohème Out of the Box

San Francisco Opera's Bohème Out of the Box is back. This is a mobile, miniature version of Puccini's evergreen opera La Bohème that travels around the Bay Area and gives 75 minute performances of the opera with piano accompaniment. 

I'm hoping that one of these days it'll be performed in Oakland, but maybe they haven't got a suitable location lined up.

Here are the details:

SAN FRANCISCO OPERA PRESENTS BOHÈME OUT OF THE BOX

 

Bohème Out of the Box runs approximately 75 minutes with no intermission and features piano accompaniment. Performed by San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows and guest artists in Italian with English narration. Live English supertitles will be available on personal mobile devices.

 

Bohème Out of the Box is a free event. Registration at sfopera.com/box is encouraged but not required.

 

Admission/seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Food and beverages will be available for purchase at many of the locations or nearby, and audiences are welcome to bring their own food and beverages to enjoy during the shows.

 

Casting and schedule subject to change. Additional event information will be announced at a later date. For more information, including directions, parking, public transit and event updates, visit sfopera.com/box.

 

PLEASE NOTE:  In the event of rain and inclement weather, these outdoor performances may be cancelled or delayed. Register at sfopera.com/box to receive updates via email or follow @sfopera on social media.

 

FREE FIRST ACT WORKSHOPS:  Families with young children are invited to participate in free First Act Workshops 45 minutes before showtime at all Bohème Out of the Box performances. Explore Puccini’s La Bohème and get to know the passionate artists in the story. Bring along a favorite stuffed-animal friend and dance to “Musetta’s Waltz,” one of the most famous melodies in all of opera.

 

 

BURLINGAME

Saturday, April 13, 2024 at 2 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 2 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

Washington Park, 850 Burlingame Avenue, Burlingame

 

Washington Park is a vibrant center for Burlingame recreation, boasting a beautiful and recently renovated Community Center. Nestled in the center of the Bay Area’s Peninsula region, the outdoor Bohème Out of the Box performances will take place steps away from a Caltrain stop and Burlingame Avenue, with its many shops and eateries. Chairs will be provided at the parking lot performance location (available on a first-come, first-served basis), and audiences are welcome to bring their own seating. Food and beverages will be available for purchase onsite. This event is presented in partnership with the Burlingame Parks and Recreation Department.

 

 

ALAMEDA

Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 2 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

Sunday, April 21, 2024 at 2 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

Radium Runway, 2151 Ferry Point, Alameda

 

In partnership with the City of Alameda and RADIUM Presents, an initiative to establish a performing arts center in Alameda catering to the needs of the local East Bay arts community, Bohème Out of the Box will be performed at Radium Runway, a short walk from the Seaplane Ferry Terminal. With the San Francisco skyline and Bay Bridge as the backdrop, seating will be on the concrete taxiway, covered with an artificial lawn. Audiences are encouraged to bring blankets or low camp chairs (a limited number of folding chairs will be available on a first-come, first-served basis). Food and beverages will be available for purchase onsite. 

 

 

ALBANY

Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 1 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

The performance will take place at the intersection of Solano Avenue and Evelyn Avenue, Albany

 

Bohème Out of the Box makes a lunchtime visit to perform along Albany’s charming Solano Avenue, full of restaurants and local businesses. Audiences are encouraged to purchase lunch at one of the local restaurants and join us in the closed street intersection for a unique lunchtime experience (chairs will be provided on a first-come, first served basis). This event is presented in partnership with the City of Albany.

 

 

UNION CITY

Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 1 p.m. – Bohème Out of the Box

Saturday, June 29, 2024 at 3:30 p.m. – SF Opera Out of the Box: Adler Fellows in Concert

Kennedy Park Amphitheater, 1333 Decoto Road, Union City

 

The beautiful park amphitheater in Charles F. Kennedy Park is the setting for two performances: a 1 p.m. performance of Bohème Out of the Box and at 3:30 p.m., SF Opera Out of the Box: Adler Fellows in Concert, a free one-hour concert of popular opera arias and duets performed by Adler Fellows, San Francisco Opera’s resident artists. Seating will be on the gently sloping hills of the outdoor amphitheater. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. The venue is walking distance from Union City BART. This event is presented in partnership with the City of Union City.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

They're Not the Same.

Your toothbrush subscription and a subscription to, say, the San Francisco Symphony.

Over at the S.F. Chronicle, Joshua Kosman interviewed Aubrey Bergauer, who has published a book about  how arts organizations can succeed in the current climate.

Bergauer is smart and practical; she made an enormous impact on the California Symphony, where she was executive director from 2014 to 2019. But in this interview she says the following, which I disagree with:

“So much of our lives as consumers is based on a membership economy, things like Netflix and Amazon. My toothbrush literally gets delivered to my door on subscription. As I was researching the book, I found that 20 percent of all global credit card transactions go toward a subscription or membership.

“And yet in the arts, we’re told that the subscription model doesn’t work! These two things just don’t compute.”

I'd say that there is a significant difference between an object that arrives at your door (or in your smart TV) on a particular schedule and an experience where you have to be at a particular location at the correct time.

My Peet's subscription (don't look at me that way; you can no longer get Garuda Blend in the stores) arrives on my front porch roughly once a month, but the date and time of day vary. That's okay! I mostly care about whether, if we're about to run out, we need to change the delivery date or get a pound of beans elsewhere. I don't have to be there to sign for the delivery. If it came at 2 a.m., that would be fine.

In other words, once it's set up, it's a passive process. I can make changes to suit my convenience, but the coffee will get there every month regardless.

But my San Francisco Symphony subscription places a lot of responsibility on me. I have to be at Davies Symphony Hall, in my seat, on most Fridays at 7:30 p.m. I can exchange for another date, to be sure, but that'll cost me $15. (Yes, I find this incredibly annoying and I'm sure Bergauer has something to say about these damned fees.) The difference is that I must be active about this: get to the scheduled concert at the right time* and place, and if I can't make the date, swap the ticket or donate it back.

Look at this this way:

  • Toothbrush subscription: Your toothbrush magically appears on your doorstep! Once it's set up, you don't need to do much.
  • Orchestra subscription: You have to dress, leave your house, and get yourself to the concert venue, which can take from ten minutes, if you live around the block, to a lot more, if, say, you live in the East Bay.
One issue Bergauer doesn't address: generational differences. There's a general belief, and it might be the truth, that younger people want more flexibility and spontaneity in their activities than older generations, who were willing to commit to subscriptions. This is in part because there is so much to choose from. It is absolutely the truth that the percentage of income to arts orgs from ticket sales has declined radically since the 1960s. Matthew Shilvock, general director of SF Opera, has recently quoted 60% down to 16%. I should have asked about the change in percentage of subscribers, but it's well known that there's been a big decline there as well.

So: how do you get more people to subscribe? I'd love to know that.

* I've been tripped up at least once by accidentally getting a ticket to a Thursday matinee performance.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Belated Friday Photo


Aeonium arboreum closeup
Oakland, CA
March, 2024


 

Femenine at Stanford and Berkeley


Christopher Rountree leading Wild Up in Femenine at Bing Concert Hall, Stanford.
Photo by Matthew TW Huang, care of Stanford Live


Last month, I saw two performances at Bing Concert Hall, Stanford, of Julius Eastman's music, performed by Wild Up, the LA area new music group, and reviewed them for SFCV. They were both terrific, fascinating music beautifully performed. 

One of those performances was devoted exclusively to Femenine, and I got to see it again, last night at Zellerbach Playhouse, UC Berkeley, in a performance that was very, very different in personnel and style from the Stanford performance. Eastman's sparse notation for Femenine allows for considerable flexibility in performance, and means that no two performances are alike, based on both choice of instrumentation and the particular performers, plus there's a big improvisatory component to the work.

At the SFCV link, I've added nearly 500 words to my original review, detailing the differences. 



Monday, March 04, 2024

Museum Mondays


Crockery in cabinet on U-505
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
November, 2016



 

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Smell-o-Rama and the Seven Doors

 


Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco
7:15 pm, Friday, March 1, 2024
Photo by Lisa Hirsch
Click to enlarge.


Last night (and tonight and tomorrow afternoon) was a giant extravaganza at San Francisco Symphony: Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire and Bartók's one-act opera Bluebeard's Castle. If you're familiar with the Bartók, you know that it's got a big orchestra, complete with organ, offstage brass, two harps, celeste, etc. 

Lemme tell you, the Scriabin orchestra was even bigger: more brass, more winds, a piano, and chorus in addition to the organ, celeste, two harps, and so on. SFS went all in with the Scriabin, including the equivalent of the color organ that he requests and the scents he wanted, provided by perfumer Mathilde Laurent of Cartier.

I'd written previously about this concert, a public service announcement for anyone who might worry about the scented half of the program. So did Tony Bravo, in the SF Chronicle, and Joshua Barone, in the NY Times (both gift links). This turned out to be a reasonable concern: my partner and a friend both decided against going because of allergies or sensitivity to odors. Bluebeard is the obvious concert closer and Prometheus is only about 20 minutes long, but from the patron comfort standpoint, it would have made sense to reverse the program order so audience members had the option of fleeing if the scents were irritating or worse. I suppose such potential audience members could have come late, but there was always the risk that the scents would linger.

So....how did it all go?

Kind of mixed! The music side of Prometheus was in excellent hands, between Salonen and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who is superb in general and certainly in some of the wilder reaches of the repertory. He was the pianist in Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine at SFS about a year ago, for example; this was one of MTT's rare forays into Messiaen.

I enjoyed the light show, which used spotlights, a giant ring of tubular lighting fixtures over the stage, and more of those fixtures upright around the stage. I don't know how the tubular fixtures work; they could change color, including gradually from one end to the other. Computers were certainly involved, and, well, maybe I should read the extensive program notes to see what types of lighting fixtures were used. I can tell you that my spectacularly strong eyeglass prescription meant that my lenses were able to split the fixtures into two different colors that appeared physically next to each other. That was weird.

While I enjoyed the light show, I also found it a distraction from the main event, that is, the music. And there was the anticipation of wondering what the scents would be like, what their effects would be, and when we were supposed to smell them.



Scent cannons, not to be confused with scene canons.
These were in the side boxes five rows ahead of me.



Scent cannons in the audience right terrace seating.
There were four in audience left terrace, plus a total of four in the orchestra-level boxes, two on each side.

Again, I should have read the program notes, which told you when in Prometheus the scent cannons would do their thing. But I didn't, leaving me to use my nose.

Now, I do not have the world's best nose. This is not the result of COVID; I didn't have the best nose, or even as good a nose as in my youth, before the pandemic. And I have never had a positive COVID test; while I was sick as a dog in December, 2023, tests on days 1, 3, and 5 were negative.

In any event, I don't have a particularly sensitive nose. At some point fairly early in Prometheus, I could sense a vaguely charcoaly, clay-like, earthy scent. From where I sat, and smelled, it was mild and inoffensive.

I think that the second scent was vaguely spicy; I don't have notes, but there was a point where I remember trying to tease out which spices I was smelling. Close to the end of Prometheus, the cannons truly went off,  opening up and spewing smoke that had a vaguely lemony scent.

That is, from where I sat, in Row T in the orchestra. I chatted for the first time with the fellow to my right, and he agreed that the scents were, well, underwhelming. A friend in the Loge asked me after the concert how much Lemon Pledge had gone into the last scent. Surely Mathilde Laurent would be horrified to hear this, that is, if she knows what Lemon Pledge is.

Yet another friend has told me that from where she sat, also in the Loge, the scents were in-your-face and unpleasant, the hall still reeked (her word) after the intermission, and the exposure to the particles made her eyes itch. Publicity for the program said that the scents were expected to disperse rapidly, but, well, it didn't work out that way.  

So, from my perspective, Smell-o-Rama was a bust. It's not good when a significant part of a performance has bad physical effects on people. The light show was fun, but between the lights and the aromatic suspense, I felt too distracted from the music, which was, to me, the most interesting part of the performance. I think the performance was swell (it's an odd work!), and sure, Scriabin wanted lights and scents, but unlike him, I'm not synesthetic. (If you are, tell me what your experience of the concert was! It was made for Scriabin, and you.) 

I would have liked to hear the music again! This would have been practical without the add-ons - Prometheus is all of 20 minutes long - but it is not to be, at least not this week. I here note that the only previous performances of Prometheus at SFS were in 1971, more than 50 years ago, and it was led by  Seiji Ozawa. I bet he was good, too.

Okay, on to the seven dwarves doors.

SFS has performed Bluebeard's Castle before, most recently in 2012. MTT conducted then, with Michelle DeYoung and Alan Held. DeYoung was back for this go-round, with bass-baritone Gerald Finley. It was semi-staged back then, with DeYoung and Held on a platform behind the orchestra. I remember it as being very good; I went twice and would have gone a third time if I hadn't been at a party in Palo Alto that day. I also remember that a native-Hungarian speaking friend told me that DeYoung's Hungarian was very good but Held's wasn't. And when the fifth door opened the production shone bright lights into the eyes of the audience, at least if you were in the orchestra.

What to say about Friday's performance? I was surprised by Salonen's conducting. The work started rather slowly, dark but with less ominous mystery than I would like. Less than Bartók would like, because there it is in the first measure: misterioso. The wind entry a few measures in starts with accented...64th notes (!), and they were too long. They are basically on-the-beat grace notes but sounded more like 16ths here. 

The performance felt strangely inert and without tension through sometime during the third or fourth door. (I was not taking notes, since I am not reviewing, but hoo boy do I wish I had been.) Anyway, yes, I was surprised, because this work would seem to be right in his wheelhouse. Well, he has surprised me before, with a Sacre du Printemps that didn't work for me and a lot of Beethoven that's been great.

It's possible that he was being considerate of the singers, making space for them to articulate the text, which both did extremely well. That said, I thought DeYoung was singing more carefully and with less freedom than I have heard from her in the past. Her voice is still big, still colorful, and still very well worth hearing. (For perspective, I first heard her in the 1998 Seattle Tristan und Isolde and most recently in 2019 as a fabulous Jezibaba in Paris, in Robert Carsen's amazing Rusalka production, a performance that also featured Karita Mattila as a jaw-dropping Foreign Princess, casually mopping the stage with Klaus Florian Vogt. Also jaw-dropping: DeYoung and the knife and her whole attitude.)

Finley was excellent and what surprised me is that his voice is smaller than I would have expected. "But you've seen him before, in opera!" I hear you exclaim. Yes, but both times were in works by John Adams, who requires amplification of singers. Those performances were in Doctor Atomic, 19 years ago, and 2022's Antony and Cleopatra. Finley withdrew from two other planned SFO appearances, in Sweeney Todd and Die Meistersinger, where he would not have been amplified.

There could have been more physical interaction between the singers, but they were placed on opposite sides of Salonen and both had scores in front of them. Despite not moving around a stage, DeYoung was physically expressive, with many gestures, turns of the head, looking at Finley, etc. He looked back at her but made much less of a physical impression.

Okay, well, let briefly address the fact that DeYoung is towering and Finley is not. To give you an idea of how tall she is, the top of her head was around where Salonen's was, and he was on a podium. Was she wearing heels? Maybe! She is very tall, regardless. So maybe there was some thought that putting the singers next to each other would be dramatically ineffective? Who knows.

Per previous, things did pick up around the third or fourth door. Yes, the fifth door was great, as you might have expected, though it might have been greater, or louder, with MTT; I think the organ was more prominent in 2012 than last night. The orchestra was gorgeously colorful throughout, with a lot of fantastic playing from the winds, harps, and percussion. I'm pretty sure that I saw Jacob Nissley and another percussionist playing the same xylophone at one point.

And in Bluebeard, the lighting wasn't at all distracting, because of the colorful score, the references to different colors in the text, and the fact that the lighting changes were all extremely appropriate. 

So, overall, an interesting evening at the symphony. I'd like to hear Prometheus again, and I'd like to hear a more dramatic rendition of Bluebeard. I wish I could get there again this weekend, since there are two more performances, but tonight I'm at the Kronos Quartet and tomorrow I'm at Left Coast for their Saariaho, Prokofiev, and Chew concert.






Friday, March 01, 2024

Monday, February 26, 2024

Beethoven in Vallejo



The Vallejo Festival Orchestra, founded and conducted by Thomas Conlin, has a concert next Saturday, March 2, 2024, at 7:30 PM. They'll be performing the following all-Beethoven program:
  • Egmonont Overture
  • Coriolanus Overture
  • Prometheus Overture (I presume this is the overture to The Creatures of Prometheus.)
  • Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Eroica
I can't get there, alas, but let me remind you that this orchestra and conductor gave a Sibelius program last year that was really terrific. I liked it a whole lot more than what the hallowed Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann did with Mendelssohn and Brahms that same week. So if you're anywhere near the Empress Theater in Vallejo next Saturday, be there or be square.

Museum Monday


Painted Panel
Part of a Triptych Altarpiece
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
November, 2019

 

Saturday, February 24, 2024

There's a Bay Area Conductor Who Eats Very, Very Well.

???

Friday, February 23, 2024

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Jules Harlow

Rabbi Jules Harlow died at 92, on February 12, 2024. From his NY Times obituary:

Many of Rabbi Harlow’s liturgical innovations were in “Siddur Sim Shalom,” a daily and Sabbath prayer book published in 1985. 
 ...
The volume also included several original poems by Rabbi Harlow, among them “Changing Light,” which was offered as an alternative to parts of the evening service known as ma’ariv:
Resplendent skies, sunset, sunrise
The grandeur of creation lifts our lives
Evening darkness, morning dawn
Renew our lives as You renew all time.
The full poem was even set to music, by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The piece had its world premiere in Helsinki in 2002, on the first anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, and its American premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2003.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Music Director Updates, Part XXX

 Some new reports:

  • Marin Alsop becomes principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, I believe succeeding Nathalie Stutzmann.
  • Simon Rattle becomes principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharonic.
  • John Storgards will becomes chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic.

Open positions:

  • Phoenix Symphony
  • Cleveland Orchestra, as of June, 2027.
  • Paris Opera is currently without a music director.
  • Nashville Symphony, when Giancarlo Guerrero leaves.
  • Deutsche Oper Berlin, when Donald Runnicles leaves.
  • Hallé Orchestra, when Mark Elder leaves.
  • Rottedam Philharmonic, when Lahav Shani leaves.
  • Los Angeles Philharmonic, as of 2026-27, when Gustavo Dudamel leaves for NY.
  • Sarasota Orchestra, following the death of Bramwell Tovey.
  • Seattle Symphony, following Thomas Dausgaard's abrupt departure in January, 2022.
  • Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Riccardo Muti left at the end of 2022-23.
  • Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra: open in 2024 when Louis Langree steps down.
  • Hong Kong Philharmonic, when Jaap van Zweden leaves in 2024.
  • Oakland Symphony, owing to the death of Michael Morgan in August, 2021.
  • Teatro Regio Turin: Open now with departure of Gianandrea Noseda. The Teatro Regio has not named a new music director.
  • Minnesota Opera: Michael Christie has left. MO has not named a new music director. 
  • Marin Symphony, at the end of 2022-23.
  • Vienna Staatsoper, when Philippe Jordan leaves at the end of 2025.
Conductors looking for jobs (that is, as of the near future, or now, they do not have a posting). The big mystery, to me, is why an orchestra hasn't snapped up Susanna Mälkki. Slightly lesser mystery: Henrik Nanasi, whose superb Cosi fan tutte is still lingering in my ears.
  • Tito Muñoz 
  • Andrey Boreyko
  • Osmo Vänskä
  • Susanna Mälkki, who left the Helsinki Philharmonic at the end of 2022-23.
  • MGT (apparently does not want a full-time job, as of early 2022)
  • Miguel Harth-Bedoya (seems settled in at Baylor)
  • Lionel Bringuier
  • Sian Edwards
  • Ingo Metzmacher
  • Jac van Steen
  • Mark Wigglesworth
  • Peter Oundjian
  • Ilan Volkov
  • Aleksandr Markovic
  • Lothar Koenigs
  • Henrik Nanasi
  • Philippe Jordan, eventually
  • Franz Welser-Möst, eventually
And closed:

  • Update and correction: San Francisco Chamber Orchestra was unable to hire Cosette Justo Valdés. Instead, Jory Fankuchen, a violinist in the orchestra, has been named Principal Conductor and will lead this season's programs.
  • Indianapolis Symphony hires Jun Markel, effective September 1, 2024.
  • Andris Nelsons renewed his contract with the Boston Symphony. He's now on an evergreen rolling contract, which will continue as long as he and the orchestra are happy with each other. MTT had one of these at SFS.
  • Shanghai Symphony, with the appointment of Long Yu.
  • Virginia Symphony, with the appointment of Eric Jacobsen.
  • Warsaw Philharmonic, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
  • Bern Symphony, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
  • Berlin State Opera, with the appointment of Christian Thielemann.
  • Dresden Philharmonic, with the appointment of Donald Runnicles.
  • New York Philharmonic, with the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel. Note that Jaap van Zweden leaves in 2024 and there will be a two-season gap before Dudamel arrives.
  • Helsinki Philharmonic: Jukka-Pekka Saraste to succeed Susanna Mälkki.
  • Staatskapelle Dresden, with the appointment of Daniele Gatti.
  • Seoul Philharmonic appoints Jaap van Zweden.
  • Royal Opera appoints Jakub Hrůša to succeed Antonio Pappano in September, 2025.

 

Friday, February 16, 2024

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Ozawa Update

After the question arose elsewhere, I asked San Francisco Symphony about Seiji Ozawa's appearances with SFS after he stepped down as music director. Here's the answer:

After the 1976-77 season, Ozawa conducted:

  • January 11-14, 1978 – Tchaikovsky Swan Lake
  • January 18-21, 1978 – Brahms Symphony No. 3 & Roger Sessions When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
  • November 9, 1986 – Pension Fund Concert – Ravel’s La Valse, Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, and Kei Anjo’s Who-ei for Erh-hu and Orchestra
  • February 23, 1993 – Pension Fund Concert – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 and Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety
  • October 29, 2001 – Pension Fund Concert – Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Berlioz Symphonie fantastique  

Ozawa also came to Davies Symphony Hall with the BSO twice (March 12, 1981 and February 13, 1996) and Saito Kinen Orchestra once (January 7, 2001).

Monday, February 12, 2024

Friday, February 09, 2024

Seiji Ozawa


Seiji Ozawa
Photo courtesy of Boston Symphony Orchestra


Seiji Ozawa, former music director of the Toronto Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Boston Symphony Orchestra, has died of heart failure at 88. He had been in poor health for about 14 years.

He led the BSO for 29 years. I lived in the Boston area for five of those years and saw him conduct only once or twice. (It was a major schlep to get from Waltham to Symphony Hall; I spent a lot of time in evening rehearsals, and there were many, many free concerts at Brandeis. In retrospect, if I'd had any sense, I would have coordinated my flute lessons, in Brookline, with the Friday matinees.)

As I understand it, the length of his tenure in Boston eventually became a problem; conflicts with the orchestra, etc. I wasn't there and wasn't paying a lot of attention, but I do remember the relief when he finally resigned and James Levine became the music director. That....ultimately didn't work out either, between Levine's health and divided attention.

Ozawa was the music director of SFS in the 1970s, and my sense is that locally, people regard him as having used the position as a springboard to a bigger and better appointment, which the BSO certainly was, at the time. Today, well, the Big Five are the Big Seven and numerous other U.S. orchestras (Seattle, Minnesota, Buffalo, and more) play on an extremely high level.

I've now read two different obituaries, at WBUR, Boston, and the NY Times, and gosh, there are outright errors in the obits and the same two omissions.

  • Typo in a Times photo caption, "Ozawar". (Could happen anywhere; now fixed.)
  • "Big Five" interpreted to mean "five greatest orchestras in the world", in the WBUR obit. (Still not fixed.)
  • Neither mentions survivors! It's pro-forma in an obit to say "Information on survivors was not immediately available" or "The Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland, which announced the death, did not release any information about survivors." (Times obit now includes survivors.)
  • Neither - and this is amazing from James R. Oestreich at the Times, in what must have been an advance obit - mentions that Ozawa conducted the world premiere of Olivier Messiaen's sole opera, St. Francois d'Assise
  • Was it a sprained or broken finger that made him turn to conducting?
FWIW, I also feel like the Times could have had more to say about the issues with Ozawa in Boston.

Friday Photo


Early morning
Oakland Laurel District
January, 2024

 

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

Changes in the San Francisco Symphony Bassoon Section


Davies Symphony Hall
January, 2024
Lit in blue the weekend of MTT's Mahler 5 concerts

About ten days ago, I noticed that SFS had an audition notice posted for principal bassoon, and I reached the obvious conclusion that this meant Stephen Paulson would be retiring.

Not so fast: I check it again, and now there is a note saying the following:
After a distinguished 48-year career as the Symphony’s Principal Bassoon, Stephen Paulson will be stepping into the Associate Principal role beginning with the 2024-25 Season.

So...I guess that means that Steven Dibner, currently the associate principal, is retiring, Paulson is stepping into that spot, and hence there's a need for a new principal.

With a tenure going back 48 years, I think that Paulson is the longest-serving member of the orchestra. A look around the musician page turned up a few players who joined between 1980 and 1984; as I've mentioned, the orchestra is very much in the midst of a generational change. 


 

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

Raehann Bryce-Davis in Recital


Raehann Bryce-Davis | Credit: Isamar Chabot

 
Mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis gave a spectacular recital about ten days ago at Herbst. My review is on the formal side and missed out in one area: I'd actually wanted to mention what she and pianist Jeanne-Minette Cilliers were wearing after the intermission, because Bryce-Davis's fiancé Allen Virgo designed both outfits and they were spectacular. But, I also didn't manage to grab a curtain call photo. The only disappointing thing about the recital was the turnout; the audience was tiny. This might have been because of Michael Tilson Thomas's valedictory Mahler 5 down the block, but I know there are plenty of opera folks who didn't turn out for this wonderful recital.

Monday, February 05, 2024