Museum Mondays

Diana and the Stag

Automaton, c. 1620

Joachim Friess

Metropolitan Museum of Art

April, 2025

 

Friday Photo

Chevy Chase Rose

Oakland, CA

May, 2025

 

Bad News from the New York Times

The New York Times has decided to "reassign" several members of its arts criticism staff to what they are calling "new roles." This news was published yesterday in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

The critics in question are:

• Margaret Lyons, television critic
• Jon Pareles, pop/rock music critic
• Jesse Green, theater critic 
• Zachary Woolfe, classical music critic

No specifics have yet been announced, beyond stating that the four will be "taking on new roles, and we will be conducting a search for critics on their beats in the weeks to come," according to Variety's quotation of the memo that has circulated at the Times.

Jon Pareles, who has been on this beat since 1988, is a legend in music journalism. Zachary Woolfe has been an extremely able chief classical music critic, a sharp-eared reviewer and graceful writer about all things opera and classical music. Will Robin, who has written for the Times over the last decade or so, writes in his newsletter about Woolfe and what he's done for classical music criticism at the Times.

It is extremely difficult to imagine who might replace Woolfe and what skills they might bring to the table that he doesn't have. What is the problem that the Times is trying to solve, here?

My best guess is that it's a combination of money and clicks: analytics programs tell the paper how many views, presumably corresponding to readers, each article has. If classical music reviews, features, and interviews aren't meeting some unknown standard, well, do they need this coverage in its current format? Do they need a classical music staff at all? (Again, what person or presentation of journalism about classical music do they think will better what Woolfe is doing?)

As far as reassignment goes, classical music critics have specific knowledge about music and musical institutions that is hard earned, through education and experience, besides being good journalists. For the Times to move a writer off the classical beat is to lose that knowledge and experience. And I can't help but think of the San Jose Mercury News reassigning Richard Scheinin, an expert writer on both classical music and jazz, to real estate.

Elsewhere:

• Alex Ross

Opera San José Resident Artists, 2025-26

Opera San José has announced its 2025-26 resident artists. I'm familiar with two them: Nicole Koh, who was a delightful Papagena in OSJ's Magic Flute last year and Courtney Miller, who was terrific in Pocket Opera's recent, superb run of Kirke Mechem's Tartuffe. I'm sure the other artists will be excellent as well - congratulations to all!

Joanne Evans, mezzo-soprano 
London-born mezzo-soprano Joanne Evans is a graduate of the 2023 Merola Opera Program and the 2024 Académie of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, where she was awarded Le Prix des Amis for Voice. In the 2024–25 season, she joined the Ravinia Steans Music Institute as a fellow before she traveled to Aldeburgh to participate in the Britten Pears Young Artist Program for contemporary composition. She also attended the bel canto Voice Academy at Fondation des Treilles and performed the role of Flora in La Traviata with both Annapolis Opera and Berkshire Opera Festival. A 2022 Vocal Fellow at the Music Academy of the West, Evans performed the role of Olga in Eugene Onegin and won the Marilyn Horne Song Competition. That same year, she took first place in the Handel Aria Competition and was a Boston District winner in the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. She is a recipient of a Career Bridges grant and has earned additional awards from the Gerda Lissner Foundation and the Premiere Opera Foundation. In addition to her performance work, Evans is the co-founder of Loam Music, an artistic partnership with singer and conductor Micah Gleason that creates semi-immersive musical experiences. 

 

Emily Michiko Jensen, soprano 

Praised by ArtsImpulse Boston for her “theatrical instincts and intriguingly versatile instrument,” Japanese American soprano Emily Michiko Jensen joins Opera San José as an Artist-in-Residence for the 2025–26 season. This June, Jensen returned to her signature role as Mimì in La Bohème with the Opera Company of Middlebury. In 2024, she made both her role and house debut as Mimì with Hawaii Opera Theatre and performed Musetta in La Bohème with the Borderland Arts Foundation’s La Frontera Opera. An alumna of the prestigious Emerging Artists Program at Boston Lyric Opera, she covered the title role in Madama Butterfly during its 2023–24 season. She is a recipient of a Career Grant from the Olga Forrai Foundation. Additional recent credits include covering the roles of Tosca, Angel More in The Fiery Angel, and Susan B. Anthony in The Mother of Us All at Chautauqua Opera and performing First Lady while covering Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at Pensacola Opera. 

 

Nicole Koh, soprano 

Soprano Nicole Koh, a native of Daly City, California, appeared with Opera San José last season as both the Queen of the Night and Papagena in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and returns for the 2025–26 season as an Artist-in-Resident. Koh has appeared as Gretel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel with Chautauqua Opera and sang the title role in Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen with the Chautauqua Opera Conservatory. Additional credits include covering the role of Winnie in Sky on Swings (Opera Saratoga), the title role in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and Nella in Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. 

 

Noah Lindquist, conductor 

A conductor, pianist, and vocal coach deeply rooted in the operatic tradition, Noah Lindquist enjoys a growing reputation as a dynamic and insightful presence on the podium. Since 2016, he has served as assistant conductor at Lyric Opera of Chicago and is a frequent member of the music staff at San Francisco Opera. He has led productions at Festival Napa Valley, where he conducted a critically acclaimed Don Pasquale featuring an international cast and an orchestra composed of musicians from leading ensembles, including the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Philadelphia Orchestra. Lindquist currently serves as head of music for the Manetti Shrem Opera Program at Festival Napa Valley. He is also an alumnus of both the Merola Opera Program and San Francisco Opera’s Adler Fellowship. He has collaborated in performance with many of today’s most celebrated singers, including Matthew Polenzani, Quinn Kelsey, Lucas Meachem, Serena Sáenz, and Pene Pati, and has coached artists appearing with the Metropolitan Opera, Oper Frankfurt, and San Francisco Opera.  

 

Courtney Miller, mezzo-soprano 

Known for her “captivating stage presence” and “excellent sense of comic timing,” mezzo-soprano Courtney Miller excels across genres. During the 2024-25 season, she returned to San Francisco Opera as Warren’s Wife in The Handmaid’s Tale, made debuts with Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera as Marcellina in Le Nozze di Figaro, and West Bay Opera as Teresa in La sonnambula, and returned to Pocket Opera as Elmire in Tartuffe after making her debut as Nancy in Albert Herring in 2023. In the 2025-26 season, she returns to Opera San José, Festival Opera, revives her one-woman show “Tell me the truth about love,” and debuts with Livermore Valley Opera as Despina in Così fan tutte. Additionally, she has sung roles with Detroit Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Madison Opera, and aboard Azamara Club Cruises. 

 

Benjamin Ruiz, tenor 

An award-winning tenor praised by Bachtrack for his “wonderful intensity” and “well-voiced” performances, Benjamin Ruiz is a graduate of Manhattan School of Music, where he earned his Master’s in Voice Performance as an Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation Scholar. While at MSM, he performed principal roles under esteemed conductors including Metropolitan Opera’s Maestro Pierre Vallet. He made his European debut as Professor Würchem in Der Vogelhändler with Mittelsächsisches Theater and his U.S. debut in the 2023-2024 season as Beppe in Pagliacci with Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Ruiz is an alumnus of the Resident Artist Program at Lyric Opera of Kansas City, the Gerdine Young Artist Program at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and The Santa Fe Opera’s renowned Apprentice Program for Singers. Notable past appearances include master classes with Donald Palumbo and Javier Camarena, and a performance with the Grammy-winning Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra during Opera Theatre Saint Louis’ 2024 Center Stage concert. Ruiz has been recognized by the Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition, Texoma NATS, the Alan M. and Joan Taub Ades Voice Competition, and is a First Prize Winner of the inaugural Duncan Williams Voice Competition, hosted by New York City Opera, Manhattan School of Music, and the Sphinx Foundation. 

 

MarkAnthony Vallejo, director 

A native of East Los Angeles, Mark Anthony Vallejo returns to Opera San José as Artist-in-Residence Director for the 2025–26 season, following his role as assistant director of La Bohème last season. He recently served as assistant director for Carmen with Music On Site, Inc., working alongside director Paul Houghtaling. A two-time finalist for the Metropolitan Opera’s Stage Directing Fellowship (2023 and 2024), Vallejo was honored to participate in an intensive for the Met’s new Carmen production, directed by Carrie Cracknell.   

Museum Mondays

Untitled

Ruth Asawa, 1949

Cataloged as S. 264, Hanging Two-Lobed, Single-Layered, Continuous Form

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

July, 2025

 

Friday Photo

Honeysaurus Melons

Berkeley Bowl, Berkeley, CA

July 2025

 

Belated Museum Mondays

The Man of Sorrows

Roberto Oderisi, c. 1354

Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA

April, 2025

 

The Nation's Birthday

Tomb of Charles Sumner

Mount Auburn Cemetery

Watertown, MA

April, 2025

Yesterday, on July 4, I went to a small protest at Ashby and College Ave. in Berkeley. It's hard to get excited about the nation's birthday at a time when the president, his cabinet, his other appointees, about half of Congress, and 2/3 of the Supreme Court are doing their best to destroy democracy in the United States. To boot, this country was founded on slavery as much as it was on the freedoms and principles described and defined in the foundational documents of the country.

When I got to the protest, a friend was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I followed with a recitation of the Gettysburg Address. The words of Abraham Lincoln are always worth reading and keeping in our hearts and minds. They are as relevant today as the day he wrote them.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Also worth reading: today, Jamelle Bouie had a conversation, in the NY Times, with Zaakir Tameez, a young lawyer who recently published a biography of Charles Sumner. Sumner is best remembered for having been beaten on the floor of the Senate by another member of Congress, but he was a prescient and brilliant opponent of slavery. You can read the conversation at this gift link.

Friday Photo

Central Synagogue Exterior

Lexington Avenue, NYC

April, 2025

The Big, Ugly, Kill-People Bill

A brief summation of what the budget bill does to the people of the United States, from What the Fuck Just Happened Today:

Senate Republicans passed Trump’s $3.3 trillion tax and spending bill by a 51-50 vote after JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. The legislation makes Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent, expands deductions for high earners, adds new breaks for tips and overtime, lifts the SALT cap to $40,000, and raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. A Yale study found low-income Americans would lose $560 a year on average, while the wealthiest gain over $118,000. The bill cuts over $1 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs and makes major changes to SNAP, adding work rules and paperwork that experts say will drop at least 17 million from health coverage and push millions more off food aid. Vance, nevertheless, dismissed concerns over the health cuts, saying, “Everything else […] is immaterial compared to the ICE money.” The bill includes more than $290 billion for border enforcement, immigration detention, and ICE operations. It also eliminates the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit after September and phases out renewable energy credits starting in 2028. Republicans struggled for 27 hours to pass the bill before securing Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s support with carveouts for Alaska, $50 billion for rural hospitals, and the removal of a solar and wind tax she opposed. Murkowski called the process “agonizing,” admitted she “struggled mightily with the cuts to Medicaid,” but said the bill “still needs work” — minutes after voting for it. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would move quickly, but warned the Senate bill “went further than many of us preferred,” and several Republicans are threatening to vote no.

Between cuts to Medicaid (it's called different things in different states) and cuts to support for the Affordable Care Act, up to 17 million people will lose their health insurance and millions are going to lose food support; hundreds of thousands or millions of people will die. Goodness knows how many people will be rounded up and imprisoned in concentration camps - because that's what "immigrant detention" stands for. And remember: ICE is rounding up people for having the wrong skin color or tattoos they don't like or not having proof of citizenship on them. And they have disappeared people who are United States citizens.

As a queer Jewish person, I know what happens to queer people and Jews when fascists are in power: we're next.  The vice president, who cast the deciding vote here, said that basically nothing mattered other than the ICE/border enforcement/immigration detention money. You bet I'm scared.

See also Nicola Griffith, on her blog.

Music@Menlo Names Next Directors

Dmitri Atapine (left, with cello) and Hyeyeon Park (right, at piano)

Cellist Dmitri Atapine and pianist Hyeyeon Park will be the next directors of Music@Menlo, succeeding cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. Their first season will be 2027; Finckel and Wu Han will conclude with the 2026 season.

You can read the full press release here. DB at Kalimac's Corner has commentary as well.

Season Updates from San Francisco Symphony

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

S.F. Symphony has announced some additions and updates to the 2025-26 season. As I had expected, the additions are mostly holiday concerts and pop-oriented programs. The exception is the annual chorus concert, which will certainly be worth hearing.

Here are the additions:

• Celebrating Hardly Strictly Bluegrass: Lyle Lovett and His Acoustic Group with the SF Symphony — Sep 13
• The Decemberists with the SF Symphony — Oct 10
• Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton — Nov 13–14
• HOLIDAYS: Christmas with the Count Basie Orchestra — Dec 3
• HOLIDAYS: The Holiday—Film with Live Orchestra — Dec 10–11
• HOLIDAYS: Frozen—Film with Live Orchestra — Dec 13
• HOLIDAYS: A Charlie Brown Christmas—LIVE! — Dec 21–22
• Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY — Mar 17
• San Francisco Symphony Chorus Concert — May 31

The balance of the updates are after the break, but I see that once again I will be querying the orthography of a work to be performed: Jennifer Higdon's oft-performed orchestral work in memory of her brother is properly blue cathedral, not Blue Cathedral. (Previously: the correct orthography for Esa-Pekka Salonen's work for clarinet and orchestra.)

San Francisco Opera Pride Concert

San Francisco Opera's Pride Concert with projections by Tal Rosner, June 27, 2025.

Photo: Matthew Washburn/San Francisco Opera

Click to enlarge, which you should do because that little white rectangle is the pad on which I was scribbling.

SF Opera's Pride Concert - the first, but not the last - was a ton of fun.

• Tony Bravo, S.F. Chronicle
• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box

San Francisco Opera's Pride Concert with projections by Tal Rosner, June 27, 2025.

Photo: Matthew Washburn/San Francisco Opera

Nikola Printz with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, conducted by Robert Mollicone, and Caroline Corrales, Thomas Kinch, Georgiana Adams at the Pride Concert, June 27, 2025.

Photo: Kristen Loken/San Francisco Opera