Museum Mondays

There's always a dog in the corner of a Rubens painting (or engraving).

Early Rubens show

Legion of Honor, San Francisco

July, 2019

Photos by Lisa Hirsch

Because There's a Martial Artist in Each of Us....

Free introduction to Danzan Ryu jujitsu!

You'll learn:

• How to roll
• How to strike or kick
• How to escape from a wrist grab
• ....and more

You'll also see a demo of some throws and other advanced arts.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019
8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Thursday, August 29, 2019
8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Open Door Jujitsu
Emeryville Martial Arts
4770 San Pablo Ave., Unit B
Emeryville, CA

Sign up (or ask questions) here!

Friday Photo

Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

February, 2019

News from Long Beach Opera

A press release tells us that Andreas Mitisek, artistic and general director (and frequent conductor) at Long Beach Opera, is leaving the company in September 2020. Here's the story:

Long Beach, CA | July 10, 2019 --- Andreas Mitisek announced that he will depart from his position as Long Beach Opera (LBO) Artistic and General Director in September 2020, following LBO’s 2020 season.  Mitisek informed the board of his decision not to renew his contract at a board meeting on June 29.

At that time, Mitisek will have led the company for 17 years.  Following his departure, he will continue his career as a freelance director and conductor, with engagements throughout the United States and Europe.  The Board confirmed that Mitisek will be invited to collaborate on future LBO productions as a freelance artist.

Andreas Mitisek became LBO's principal conductor in 1998 and Artistic and General Director in 2003. Under Mitisek’s leadership, LBO grew from 2 to 5 operas per season, and the supporting operating budget has expanded from $430,000 in 2003, to $1.6M in 2018, and season subscriptions have increased by over 500%. By exploring unorthodox venues, he has been able to attract new audiences for opera and uphold LBO’s artistic vision by presenting 20th century and rare works.

Mitisek said, “My life, my thinking, my work, my relationships have been defined by Long Beach Opera and have also defined LBO.  It’s time now to embark on new adventures, and for LBO to have new artistic leadership as well. I am pleased to be able to leave the company in the very capable and passionate hands of its leadership, including Jennifer Rivera, Executive Director and C.E.O. and Board President Dr. Robert Braun.”

Board President Braun said, “Long Beach Opera has an international reputation for being an unusually innovative arts organization thanks, in large part, to Andreas’ brilliant artistic leadership. We at LBO are so grateful for his years of service to the organization and are also thrilled that in Jennifer Rivera we have an Executive leader with a strong artistic background that will help shepherd us into the next era of excellence for LBO.”

Rivera, Braun and the Long Beach Opera Board have commenced a search to find the next Artistic Director for the company. After a two decade career as a Grammy nominated opera singer, Rivera left her performing career to become an Arts Administrator in May of 2017, first as Development Director and then as Executive Director for Long Beach Opera.

Rivera said, “Andreas Mitisek’s impact on the Long Beach Opera, and the entire opera industry, has been profound. He has worked to push the boundaries of opera, expanding the way people produce opera all around the country with his innovative, bold artistic choices. Long Beach Opera has grown tremendously under his leadership.” 

Mitisek will oversee and be artistically involved in all four of LBO’s 2020 season productions, which include Purcell’s King Arthur, Peter Maxwell Davies’ The Lighthouse, Gavin Bryars’ Billy the Kid and Robert X Rodriguez’s Frida.

Long Beach Opera just completed its highly successful 2019 season by presenting the world premiere of Anthony Davis’ The Central Park Five, which LBO commissioned and produced to full houses and coast to coast recognition. The season also included Steve Reich’s Three Tales, Bach/Sylvian’s The Black Cat and Philip Glass’ In The Penal Colony.”

I've seen several productions at LBO in the last ten years, including Glass's Akhnaten, a double bill of Martinu's Tears of a Knife and Poulenc's Les Mammelles de Tiresias, and this year's The Central Park Five. Looking at their repertory list, I wish I'd seen everything they're performed.

 

News You Can Use, War Memorial Opera House Edition

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

I reported some time ago that the orchestra and other seats in the War Memorial Opera House were scheduled to be replaced in 2021. Now, an article in the San Francisco Chronical about retiring Performing Arts Center Managing Director Beth Murray contains the following paragraph:

Even now, as Murray packs up her office on the ground floor of the Veterans Building, the 64-year-old can look out her window and see a project she’s steered through planning and design. For instance, the original mansard roof of the Opera House, completed in 1932, will soon be replaced and so will all 1,100 seats on the orchestra level. Those jobs will require the San Francisco Opera and Ballet to shorten their seasons by 14 weeks in 2021.

“Those seats were redone, not replaced, when we renovated the Opera House,” Murray says. “Big mistake.”

She knew it was a mistake as soon as she sat down on opening night of the fall 1997 opera season. “Big mistake,” she repeats. “Those are the original frames. Have you sat there?”

Well, THAT's interesting, isn't it. I queried the press departments at SFO and SFB, which responded as follows:

From SFB:  We are looking into some very good options on the venue/programming side for that time period at the moment, but do not have concrete plans to share just yet. There is still a lot to iron out on all fronts...we have every intention to keep our patrons and media partners informed in the coming months as soon as we have more info. 

From SFO: San Francisco Opera is looking forward to the forthcoming seat replacement project (in the orchestra level) to improve the experience for our patrons in the War Memorial Opera House. 

We are at the beginning stages of this phase of the project and will be sharing updates, including information about the seats and project timeline, later this fall. 

At this time, we do not have further information to share about seat replacements in other levels of the house (seats in the balcony level of the opera house were replaced in summer 2015). 

Note: the project will not cause San Francisco Opera/San Francisco Ballet to shorten seasons by 14 weeks as stated in the San Francisco Chronicle article, as part of the work will be done during the off-season.

I'm under the impression that the Chron article surprised both organizations a bit. I would have expected the Performing Arts Center to give them a heads-up about the forthcoming article.

Thanks to You You Xia and Julia Inouye for their responses! Looking forward to whatever transpires.

Museum Mondays

Mosaic Fox, Millard Sheets

Part of a wall-sized mosaic

Marciano Foundation Museum

Los Angeles, June, 2019

The colors are not quite right, owing to a combination of the lighting and my phone camera.

Goings-On at the Paris Opera

Bastille Opera

February, 2019

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

UPDATE, 7/5/2019:  The COC is denying the report, but the Globe & Mail article is paywalled, so I cannot quote it.

About two months ago,  Definitely the Opera reported on the administrative situation at the Paris Opera (Opéra National de Paris). At the time, the following administrators were under consideration to succeed Stéphane Lissner, who must retire from his post as general director owing to retirement age:

• Peter de Caluwe (current La Monnaie director) 
• Dominique Meyer (Wien Staatsoper)
• Olivier Mantei (Opera-Comique in Paris) 
• Alexander Neef (Canadian Opera Company; artistic advisor at Santa Fe)

Earlier, Christina Scheppelmann had also been under consideration, but she is succeeding Aidan Lang at Seattle Opera, Lang having accepted the general directorship at the Welsh National Opera.

It now appears that Alexander Neef has been tapped for Paris, which will leave the COC without a director in a couple of years. Lissner's contract will be extended until Neef is able to take over.

This leaves Paris still looking for a music director (or chief conductor, whichever title is correct) to take over from Philippe Jordan, when Jordan departs for Vienna in 2020. 

Here's the thing: after hearing him three times in Paris and reading accounts of his work in the Met Ring, I'm pretty sure that Paris can do better. Of the three I heard him conduct, Bérénice was, at the time and in retrospect, the most impressive. It's a new piece, and, I think, a great one, but what it most called for, and I saw it twice, seems to be extreme precision, rather than sweep or overarching shape.

This is Jordan's metier. Take a look at comments from Christian Van Horn and Brandon Jovanovich in my article Touring the World with Les Troyens; that's a conductor who is perhaps too focussed on the measure-by-measure aspects of a work. I found his pacing and much else in Tristan odd; he seemed to miss the overall structure of the work. As for his Troyens....when I heard Donald Runnicles and Sir Andrew Davis conduct the opera, I was convinced that I was hearing the greatest opera ever written. They gave the work real sweep and power and yes, large-scale structure. Jordan's conducting in the opera was clean, fast (too fast for my taste), and...seemed a little perfunctory. It certainly didn't have the emotional impact that Runnicles and Davis gave it. I don't think this had anything to do with the Tcherniakov production, which I liked a lot, and the singers were uniformly outstanding.

A friend who heard Jordan's Götterdämmerung told me he found it efficient; Joshua Kosman saw the HD broadcast of the Met Die Walküre and questioned something - rhythm and harmonic structure? - about Jordan's conducting. That's in line with what I heard in Paris.

So, also of interest in Paris: who will succeed Jordan?

UPDATE: I found @JoshuaKosman's tweet about that Walküre (and the whole thread is here):

FURTHER UPDATE: I meant to quote Zachary Woolfe on Jordan's conducting in the Met Ring, which matches what I heard in Paris:

If only the orchestra had been nearly so characterful. While Philippe Jordan’s conducting had moment-by-moment fleetness, and agile responsiveness to the singers, there was no sense of long-arching accumulations of intensity, little variety of mood or color. The sound was thin, murky and diffuse, like a cloudy broth; the brasses were inelegant even when not flubbing.

Friday Photo

Bastille Marché

Rue Richard Lenoir

Paris, February, 2019

Rising Stars?

The now-annual end-of-season popularity contest Rising Stars vote, to name a favorite Emerging Star, has dropped into my mailbox. As usual, I won't be voting. Here's some commentary on each of the singers.

• It is said that "Tenor Daniel Johansson delivered a standout performance as the besotted young soldier Matteo in his Company debut." I never finished my blog post about Arabella, but I can't agree with this. His acting was fine, but I was surprised at how dry Johansson's tone was.
• Hye Jung Lee, who sang the Fiakermilli in Arabella, made her first SFO appearance in 2012's Nixon in China. Arabella was her fourth appearance with the company. She emerged back in 2012 and 2013, when she also appeared in Tales of Hoffman.
• Golda Schultz, sure. Emerging star!
• Andriana Chuchman, yes. Emerging star!
• Christina Gansch, okay. First appearance, so at least locally an emerging star.
• Sarsha Cooke. Are you kidding me? Sasha Cooke is a Big Star. Her breakthrough was in the Met's Doctor Atomic, back in 2008! She emerged long ago! Also, sorry to mention, she was miscast in Orlando, as fabulous as her acting was.
• J'Nai Bridges, okay!
• Rachel Willis-Sorensen, yes, sure, emerging.

Museum Mondays

YAYOI KUSAMA 

WITH ALL MY LOVE FOR THE TULIPS, I PRAY FOREVER (2011)

Marciano Foundation Museum

Los Angeles, 2019

The Marciano Foundation Museum is a recently-opened museum of contemporary art. It's in a fabulous building that used to be a Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, and it's got some wonderful site-specific art as well as retaining a mosaic designed by the architect of the building. 

Thanks to D. Fletcher Dunham for encouraging me to go!

Return of Opera at the Ballpark!

This fall, San Francisco Opera will again have a simulcast to Giants Stadium! (Not the current "naming rights" name of the San Francisco baseball stadium.)

It'll be a broadcast of Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, on Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 7:30 p.m. You can sign up right now on the SFO web site.

Current casting includes Bryan Hymel, Nadine Sierra, Lucas Meachem, James Creswell, Timothy Mix, and others.

Friday Photo

Lions

Cimitiere de Montparnasse

Paris, October, 2018

Museum Mondays

Musée d'Orsay

La jeune Tarentine

Alexandre Schoenewerk

Paris, 2019

Friday Photo

Auto Shop Signage, Downtown Oakland

May, 2019

Auto Shop Signage, Laurel District, Oakland

May, 2019

Verena Wagner Lafferentz

Catching up on old news: Richard Wagner's last surviving grandchild, Verena Wagner Lafferentz, died in April at age 98. She was the youngest child of Winifred and Siegfried Wagner.

I remember standing in front of the Wagner family tree in Haus Wahnfried, Bayreuth, in 2015, and being shocked to discover that one of Siegfried's children was still alive. I'd somehow completely missed her existence, overshadowed as she was by brothers Wieland and Wolfgang and their roles at the festival.

She had led a retiring life after World War II, and remained silent on the matter of her family's relationships with the Third Reich and prominent members of that rightly-reviled regime. She was romantically linked to Hitler, according to her Wikipedia page, which features a photo of Verena, her older sister Friedelind, and Hitler, and married to Bodo Lafferentz, a Nazi officer and party member who was many years her senior.

Elsewhere:

• Alex Ross had a few things to say about her
• NY Times obit
• Telegraph (UK) obit

Museum Mondays

Statuary 

Musée du Louvre, Paris

February, 2019

Friday Photo

Floor Tiles

Chicago Athletic Club

Chicago, March, 2019

Museum Mondays

Seascape, Pierre-August Renoir

Art Institute of Chicago

March, 2019

Description and a better photo at the Art Institute's web site

SFO Orlando Media Roundup

Sasha Cooke, Orlando (center); Christian Van Horn (Zoroastro), right.

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

What we all think. More coming!

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chronicle
• Ilana Walder-Biesanz, SFCV
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box
• SF Mike at Civic Center
• Opera Tattler
• Lisa Hirsch, Iron Tongue of Midnight
• James Ambroff-Tahan, SF Examiner

Short version of most of the above: Everyone loves Sasha Cooke, in general, but thinks she is badly miscast. Mostly looking side-eye at the conducting, mostly liking the production.

Handel's Orlando, San Francisco Opera

Sasha Cooke, left, as Orlando; Christian Van Horn, right, as Zoroastro, in Handel's Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

Handel's Orlando is back at San Francisco Opera, after an absence of 34 years. This is the opera with the asterisk in the list of operas that I've seen: I am pretty sure that I saw either Handel's Orlando or  Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso at SFO back in the 80s. However, I didn't save either tickets or programs or have any system for keeping track, so, I'm not sure which. I remember thinking "I'm not a big Handel fan and I don't care that much for Vivaldi's instrumental music, so maybe I should try the Vivaldi." Did I? Only ancient ticket sales records know the truth.

In any event, in the intervening decades, I've become quite the Handel fan and I've seen eleven or twelve of his operas and oratorios, so I was glad to see Orlando turn up on the schedule for this year.

And now...I am disappointed. It's possible that some of the problems in the production will clear up during the run, but I'm not really hopeful, because, well, they are big problems.

First off, I was not at all happy with the conducting of Christopher Moulds. The orchestra was too loud for an awful lot of the opera, at least from where I was sitting, uncharacteristically, in the Grand Tier, row A. Now, this could just be the opera house acoustics and it could also be a function of the set, which doesn't always give the singers much to bounce off. And the orchestra numbers around 40, which is not big for a 3200 seat house but is big for a Handel opera.

Volume aside, Moulds's conducting also lacked what I would call propulsiveness and thrust, a sense of coherent forward movement. This is completely separate from tempo; I have heard very slow performances that nevertheless always had forward momentum. I'm looking at you, Sir Mark Elder, and your amazingly wonderful Die Meistersinger, which clocked in at nearly six hours and somehow never felt draggy. What this takes is a feel for the shape and balance and harmonic movement of an opera, and somehow this was missing. I mean, I have some doubts about Moulds's tempo choices as well, but I don't have specific enough notes to get into that.

Sasha Cooke as Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

The makeup and costume artists and director did a great job of turning 

a very feminine singer into a young man.

Second big problem, alas and alack, I don't feel that Sasha Cooke, a lovely singer whom I've liked in so many roles, was a good choice for the title role. Her acting was wonderful; by the end of the piece I was really convinced that she was a young man, perhaps a particularly delicate countertenor. But the vocal range is just all wrong for her: she is a high mezzo and this role needs a singer whose money notes are a lot lower than Cooke's money notes. I here note that Marilyn Horne was SFO's first Orlando, both here and in the Vivaldi, and, well.

Lastly, I think the production, which sets the opera in a rehabilitation hospital in England during World War II - a hospital for the shell-shocked - works reasonably well. It is a potentially very powerful updating, the second of this type that I have seen this year, because the Tcherniakov Les Troyens that I saw in Paris sets the Carthage acts in a rehabilitation center for soldiers who are, yes, shell-shocked from battle. (Yes, this means Christian Van Horn has spent a lot of time in the moral equivalent of a white coat this year, since he was that production's Narbal.)

But but but. The production is much too polite. There are an awful lot of powerful emotions on stage, from Dorinda's despair over Medoro's love for Angelica to, most crucially, Orlando's mad scenes. They were the least demented mad scenes imaginable; there was just not enough physical portrayal of the characters' states of mind, especially Orlando's despair and jealousy. And this is really necessary to put across the opera.

Heidi Stober (Angelica); Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen (Medoro) in Orlando

Photo: Cory Weaver / San Francisco Opera

I liked Heidi Stober (Angelica) fine; debuting soprano Christina Gansch (Dorinda) sang well, with some acid at the top of her range. I think that both Stober and Gansch were underdirected; neither of their situations really moved me.

Christian Van Horn has tremendously flexibility, especially for a bass, although the very top notes sounded a bit pressed. I think one of his arias might have been cut, based on a very odd harmonic progression at a crucial moment, but I need to check the press notes to see if this is right.

Young Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who took over the role of Medoro after David Daniels was arrested, sang gorgeously and acted well, although....someone should teach him 1) how to use a cane 2) how to limp convincingly.

Special kudos to the squad of comprimarios, who had a lot to do as doctors and nurses and were marvelous all around. Primarily on their account, I'm sorry not to have curtain call photos. And let me also note that I love the look of the production, from the Art Deco sets to the wonderful 40s clothing and hairdos.

A note that might be minor or might be significant: I would have personally hesitated to put a swastika and a photo of Hitler in the projections, and I would also have hesitated to show psychiatric torture during the production, which is very likely what electroshock therapy was in the 1940s. I was also not really thrilled with Orlando's repeated attempts to choke Dorinda. Find some other way to represent his tortured jealousy.

Friday Photo

View of the San Francisco Bay Bridge

May, 2019

Update on Closing SFS Program

The final repertory for the first half of the program and the cast for L'enfant et les sortilges:

The first half of the program features an eclectic mix of chamber works by Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré. Pianist John Wilson performs excerpts from Debussy’s playful Children’s Corner and the sensual La Plus que lente, joined by members of the San Francisco Symphony. This is followed by the Allegro molto movement from Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, featuring SFS musicians Helen Kim on violin, Matthew Young on viola, Sébastien Gingras on cello, and pianist Sayaka Tanikawa. Mezzo-soprano Ginger Costa-Jackson sings Debussy’s “Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison” withPeter Grunberg on piano and, rounding out the first half, pianists Grunberg and Wilson perform Ravel’s The Enchanted Garden from Ma Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose), inspired by children’s stories from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French collections, especially Charles Perrault’s Contes de ma Mère l’Oye (Mother Goose Tales, published in 1697). 

That's right, it's all chamber music, which has me scratching my head. They must really need the rehearsal time for the Ravel.

And here's the cast, not including conductor Martyn Brabbins.

Highly acclaimed for her “passionate intensity and remarkable vocal beauty,” mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard stars as The Child in these performances of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges—a role she recorded with Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen Orchestra on the Decca Classics label, winning a 2016 Grammy Award® in the category of Best Opera Recording. Leonard made her SFS debut in 2013 and has been featured in several notable performances since then, including Tilson Thomas’ From the Diary of Anne Frankin November 2018, Bernstein’s Arias and Barcarolles in September 2017 and the semi-staged On the Town in May 2016, and Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole in June 2015. The accomplished cast also includes sopranos Anna Christy (The Fire, The Princess, The Nightingale), Nikki Einfeld (The Bat, A Country Lass), and Marnie Breckenridge (The Bergère, The Screech-owl); mezzo-sopranos Ginger Costa Jackson (A Herdsman, The Chinese Cup, The White Cat) and Jennifer Johnson-Cano (Mama, The Dragonfly, The Squirrel); tenor Ben Jones (The Little Old Man, The Tree Frog, The Teapot); baritoneKelly Markgraf (The Comtoise Clock, The Black Cat); and bass-baritone Michael Todd Simpson (The Armchair, A Tree).  

Yikes: MTT Taking Medical Leave

This...is something of a shock: Michael Tilson Thomas is withdrawing from all engagements between  June 17 and September 3, that is, the rest of the SFS season after the Mahler 9.. He's having a ("cardiac procedure", which I take to mean "heart surgery." Here's the press release, which includes the complete repertory for the last program, which Martyn Brabbins will conduct.

Wish MTT the best of health and the best possible outcome of the upcoming procedure.

MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS WITHDRAWS FROM ALL ENGAGEMENTS

FROM JUNE 17 UNTIL SEPTEMBER 3

Michael Tilson Thomas announced today that he is withdrawing from all engagements beginning June 17 until September 3 in order to undergo a cardiac procedure. The operation, which will take place in Cleveland, is scheduled to follow his performances of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony on June 13, 14, 15, and 16.

“I deeply regret missing concerts and projects that I have been greatly anticipating,” said Tilson Thomas. “On the advice of my doctors, I need to undergo this procedure at this time in continuation of treatment for a heart condition I have managed for many years. I expect to make a full recovery in time to return to the San Francisco Symphony for the opening of my 25th season as Music Director.”

Previously scheduled engagements from which Tilson Thomas is withdrawing are performances with the San Francisco Symphony and appearances at the Music Academy of the West including concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra. 

“The entire San Francisco Symphony family supports Michael and is sending positive thoughts to both him and his husband Joshua at this time,” said Mark C. Hanson, CEO of the San Francisco Symphony. “We look forward to seeing him on the podium for Mahler’s 9th next week, and then following his full recovery over the summer, for the opening weeks next September of his extraordinary final season as Music Director.”

Conductor changes for SFS concerts affected are as follows:

June 20–22: Conductor Joshua Gersen will lead the Orchestra in a program that includes the SFS premiere and co-commission of Steve Reich’s Music for Ensemble and Orchestra and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Yefim Bronfman. Replacing MTT’s Street Song for Symphonic Brass will be Arvo Pärt’s Fratres for Strings and Percussion and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. Gersen made his SFS debut in 2013 and has led the Orchestra multiple times in both Davies Symphony Hall and in experimental SoundBox programs. 

June 27, 29, and 30: British conductor Martyn Brabbins will conduct the SFS in a semi-staged production of Ravel’s L'Enfant et les sortilèges June 27, 29, and 30, featuring mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as L’Enfant. Created by the visionary team of animator Grégoire Pont and director James Bonas, the staging uses advanced projection techniques to capture the fantasy and poetry of Ravel’s spellbinding and luminous tale. Brabbins premiered this dazzling and popular production at the Opéra de Lyon in 2012, reviving it in 2013 at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and again in Lyon in 2016. First half repertoire now also includes Debussy’s Children’s Corner, La Plus que lente, Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison and Ravel’s The Enchanted Garden fromMa Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose).

July 10: New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New will make her debut with the Orchestra on July 10 at Stanford University’s Frost Amphitheater in the inaugural concert of the Symphony’s new summer series at the renovated and historic outdoor venue, presented by Stanford Live. The all-Tchaikovsky program features Gil Shaham performing the composer’s Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 5 which replaces the previously announced Symphony No. 4, and the “Polonaise” from Eugene Onegin. Gemma New conducts the inaugural concert in addition to her scheduled performances leading the SFS July 13 and 14 at Frost in a program featuring Ravel’s Shéhérazade and Beethoven’s majestic Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and vocal soloists.

Museum Mondays

Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier

Bust of Saïd Abdullah of the Darfour People

Art Institute of Chicago, March, 2019

Previously: Museum Mondays

International Orange Chorale: Re-Set

The International Orange Chorale (IOC)'s June, 2019 program is mighty interesting: as usual, the chorus performs an assortment of recent music from many places, by many composers. They'll be singing works by:

•  Ola Gjeilo
• Graeme Langager
• Frank LaRocca
• James MacMillan
• Frank Martin
• Stephen Paulus
• Brian Schmidt
• Urmas Sisask
• Nicholas Weininger
• Eric Whitacre
• David Wikander
• The premiere of "Te Puse Collares" by 2019 Composer-in-Residence, Robin Estrada

Also:  Former Director Paul Kim is flying in from Denmark to conduct a movement Martin's Double-Choir Mass, while founding Director Jeremy Faust is flying cross-country to conduct the Whitacre. 

They're performing the program twice:

Saturday, June 8, 2019

7:30 p.m.

Christ Church East Bay

2138 Cedar St.

Berkeley, CA

Saturday, June 15, 2019
7:30 p.m.
St. Mark's Lutheran
1111 O'Farrell St.
San Francisco, CA

Admission is free; donations gratefully accepted.