The Best of 2025

Kang Wang as the title character

The Monkey King

San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO

 

SFCV published the writers' collective opinions of the best performances of the year. The Bay Area list is here. My five choices were these:

• Esa-Pekka Salonen's Mahler 2
• Poiesis Quartet at Noe Music
• The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera
• Pivot Festival, Carla Kiehlstedt's 26 Little Deaths
• Tartuffe, Pocket Opera

It was a tough call. Here's the rest of my long list:

• La bohème at SFO; a seriously great run, beautifully directed, with two terrific casts.
• MTT 80, a deeply touching celebration of the man.
  
• Parsifal at SFO
• Rigoletto at SFO
• Bluebeard's Castle at Opera San José
• Turn of the Screw at SFCM, better staged and conducted than what I saw at Santa Fe over the summer.
• John Adams third piano concerto, After the Fall, at SFS. I couldn't include the concert on my short list because the second half was (&)%$)_@_ Carmina Burana.
• Dalia Stasevska at SFS, in the Thorvaldsdottir cello concerto and RWV's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
• Cabrillo Festival, Becoming
• Hello, Star at OP. Just a perfect 45 minutes of opera begging for a larger orchestra. A wonderful libretto, beautiful music, great direction on a tiny stage.
• Donald Runnicles and Irene Roberts at SFS

As you can see, I named four of the last six operas at SFO as among the best things I saw; Dead Man Walking was also superb. SFO had a stupendous year and in fact has been on a roll since the centennial season. Hats off to Matthew Shilvock and his team for this long string of artistic successes, which has also included a fair number of sellouts.

As for the flip side, I am going to pass on flagging concerts I found disappointing or wrong-headed. There's not much doubt that the worst event of the year was Esa-Pekka Salonen's departure from San Francisco Symphony after just five years as music director. He reinvigorated the orchestra's programming, led many great concerts, hired many terrific musicians, and thanks to the short-sightedness of the board and management, which couldn't figure out how to fund his ambitions for the future, he is gone.

• Joshua Kosman's picks
• SFCV Los Angeles writers' picks
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center

Edwin Outwater at SFCM

Conductor Edwin Outwater

Photo by David Kim, courtesy of SFCM

In April, 2020, Edwin Outwater was appointed to the position of Music Director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I meant to report on this at the time and, well, the pandemic and life caught up. Here's the press release; note that all dates not otherwise specified are 2020:

In the past two decades, savvy classical music presenters have focused on evolving the art form – through cross-genre collaborations, new audience engagement, and demonstrating relevance to modern-day life. In the past two months, this relevance has been thrown into sharp relief, as audiences worldwide have found comfort, escapism, and catharsis in digital performances during the COVID-19 pandemic. San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s contribution to this movement is the Tiny Dorm Concert Series, an expertly curated whole-community effort connecting faculty, students, and alumni with audiences across the globe.

On Saturday, April 11, the series’ closing night will be hosted and curated by visionary conductor Edwin Outwater, announced today as the new SFCM Music Director. San Francisco audiences will recognize Outwater from his enduring relationship with San Francisco Symphony, where he has served as Resident Conductor, Director of Summer Concerts, and Music Director of its Youth Orchestra. Collaborations with living composers such as Mason Bates, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Missy Mazzoli have been hallmarks of his career, as have projects with household names like Renée Fleming, Wynton Marsalis, John Lithgow, Metallica, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Outwater has also enjoyed high-profile engagements with Ben Folds, Sara Bareilles, Seth MacFarlane, Tituss Burgess, and legendary drag performers Peaches Christ, Bob The Drag Queen, and Courtney Act.

“We knew SFCM’s next music director would need to have a rare combination of qualities,” said Conservatory President David Stull. “Essentially, we sought an architect for the ensemble of the future – someone with both a truly innovative mindset and extensive experience working with top-tier ensembles. After a two-year search, we have found this leader in Edwin Outwater.”

As music director, Outwater’s primary focus will be the conservatory’s broadscale musical objectives – shaping the large ensemble experience across orchestra, chamber, and contemporary music ensembles, striking a balance between canonical works and new initiatives, and guiding programmatic themes. His duties will also include direct mentorship of students in the conducting program.

“There is an incredible wave of growth happening at SFCM,” said Outwater. “I’m thrilled to be joining this dynamic and forward-looking institution. Under David’s leadership, the conservatory’s expansions, including creative technology and jazz, are creating new pathways for young musicians. I’m eager to help nurture these entrepreneurial students as they build careers for today’s musical landscape.” 

A California native, Outwater has forged his own inventive career at major orchestras and institutions throughout the world, where he has often premiered new commissions and introduced audiences to works beyond the standard repertoire. His stellar reputation as a curator has been built via the SoundBox series in San Francisco and the Intersectionsseries, which has connected orchestral music to quantum physics, neuroscience, film, food, and yoga, in the United States and Canada. His broad curiosity has resulted in collaborations with a diverse array of artists from all musical genres – from cellist Johannes Moser to Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq – and inspired the creation of Hack The Orchestra, a hackathon that challenges young programmers to create new content for the concert experience.

As the COVID-19 pandemic drives both higher education and arts institutions to embrace the agile mindset required for rapid innovation, Outwater’s vision can be expected to shape the SFCM student experience across programs and platforms.

“Ultimately, I hope our present circumstances can be a catalyst for greater ingenuity,” said Outwater. “SFCM makes it a priority to empower students to take an active role in creating their own musical futures, and this is the attitude the world needs to continue moving forward. Leonard Bernstein called it the lesson of the century: ‘as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man.’”

I asked about the responsibilities that come with this position, and SFCM replied:

As music director, he conducts the orchestra, oversees the program, selects the personnel and identifies large scale projects. He also curates our contemporary music division, works with Historical Performance and the Opera Departments on large scale projects, identifies guest conductors (for all ensembles including the orchestra), coaches students, and works with the Assoc. Dean for Artistic Programming (Hank Mau) in crafting a season. He occasionally will teach a seminar and he runs the conducting program which comprises 2-4 students. 

Edwin will also lead a discussion that selects our artistic/academic theme for the year, which is part of an initiative we refer to as "Connected Learning." This year it was Music and Nature, and we witnessed academic courses revolving around the use of natural themes in art, literature, technology, and music. Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) undertook several projects in which data from the Livermore Labs measuring climate change was translated into a soundscape installation, and smaller projects such as the one we have moved to August 30th at the Lynmar estate, where we will show the parallels of mathematics that describe the natural world (Fibinnaci, Golden Section) and string instrument design. 

Interesting work!

Outwater's predecessors were:

• Eric Dudley, currently Artistic Director of SF Contemporary Music Players, from 2016-2017 through 2017-18.
• Scott Sandmeier, from 2013-14 through 2015-16
• 
  

Opera at SF Conservatory - This Weekend!

Yet another of the riches on offer this coming weekend: San Francisco Conservatory of Music presents two performances of Mozart's The Impressario and the Prolog to Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Here are the details:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- SFCM Opera will present two performances of Mozart's The Impresario and Strauss' prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos at Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall. The production will be directed by Heather Mathews and conducted by Curt Pajer.

 

The Impresario and Ariadne auf Naxos are both tongue-in-cheek musical comedies exploring the behind-the-scenes happenings at the opera. Mozart's playful one-act singspiel, The Impresario, deals with the rivalry between two prima donnas vying for top billing in at an opera company, while the prelude to Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos sees a comedy troupe and a high-brow opera company being reluctantly forced to perform simultaneously at a dinner party.

SFCM Opera Presents

Mozart's The Impresario and Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos (Prologue)

Heather Matthews, director
Curt Pajer, conductor

Thursday, November 21, 2019, 7:30 PM

Friday, November 22, 2019, 7:30 PM

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall

Free, reservations recommended

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

50 Oak Street

San Francisco, CA 94102

boxoffice@sfcm.edu

415-503-6275

sfcm.edu/performances

SF Conservatory of Music This Weekend

SFCM has a great series of concerts this weekend, starting....tonight!


The San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Kick-Off Weekend, September 27–29, Opens 2019-20 “Music and Nature” Season with Eight Free Concerts Featuring Conservatory and Pre-College Students, Faculty, and Renowned Guest Artists 

Friday, September 27, 7:30 PM, Sol Joseph Recital Hall

SFCM Guitars with Del Sol String Quartet

Osvaldo GOLIJOV: Fish Tale (1998)

Alec Holcomb '19, guitar; Michelle Sung, flute

Ronald Bruce SMITH: Tomb(er) (2017) World Premiere

David Tanenbaum, guitar

Del Sol String Quartet

     Benjamin Kreith, violin; Sam Weiser, violin; Charlton Lee, viola; Kathryn Bates, cello

Sergio ASSAD: Un bouquet pour Julia (2019)

Marc Teicholz, guitar

Anna THORVALDSDÓTTIR: Rain (2010, revised 2019)

Ann Moss, soprano; Jessie Nucho, flutes; David Tanenbaum, guitar

Sebastian ROBLES: Garden (2019)

Abshir Miller, guitar; Sebastian Robles, guitar; Jakob Sonnek, guitar; Zhanxiang Shi, guitar

DEBBUSSY (arr. PRESTI-LAGOYA): Claire de Lune 

Judicaël Perroy, guitar

Natalia Lipnitskaya, guitar

______________________________________

Saturday, September 28, 12:00 PM, SFJAZZ Center Miner Auditorium

RJAM Side-By-Side

RJAM Side-By-Side concert features SFCM’s Roots, Jazz and American Music (RJAM) students alongside SFCM faculty members Carmen Bradford, Steve Davis, Mario Guarneri, Jason Hainsworth, Simon Rowe, and SFCM faculty member and SFJAZZ Collective member David Sánchez, performing originals and jazz standards developed during a three-day residency.

______________________________________

Saturday, September 28, 5:30 PM, Sol Joseph Concert Hall

Pre-College Concert

______________________________________

Saturday, September 28, 2019, 7:30 PM, Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall

New Music Ensemble

Nicole Paiement, conductor

MESSIAEN: Le merle noir

TAKEMITSU: Tree Line

Laura SCHWENDINGER: Constellations

John Luther ADAMS: In a Treeless Place, Only Snow

______________________________________

Sunday, September 29, 12:00 PM, Sol Joseph Recital Hall

The Music of Nature Voice Concert

"Music and Nature" celebrated in songs and arias by Schubert, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Copland and more. Performed by SFCM voice students with Steven Bailey and Mai-Linh Pham, piano.

______________________________________

Sunday, September 29, 2019, 2:00 PM, Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall

Chamber Music Concert

Works by Haydn, Grieg, and Scriabin.

______________________________________

Sunday, September 29, 2019, 5:00 PM, Osher Salon

Historical Performance Concert

With fragrant flowers'

Songs, duets, trios and madrigals on nature by William Byrd, Thomas Morley, John Dowland, Thomas Campion, and other Elizabethan masters.

Performed by voice students of the SFCM Baroque Ensemble, Corey Jamason, direction, with Jon Mendle, lute, Elisabeth Reed and Alyssa Wright, viols.

______________________________________

Sunday, September 29, 2019, 7:30 PM, Sol Joseph Recital Hall

Technology and Applied Composition Concert: The Climate Music Project

Listen to the sound of climate change in this performance of data-driven music and sonifications.

Working closely with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, student, faculty, and alumni musicians wrote custom software to translate historical climate data and predictive data models into electronic instruments and musical parameters. With this data as the seed, the musicians will present a range of remarkable compositions that explore the urgent issue of climate change through sound.

This concert is presented as part of an ongoing collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project, whose mission is to communicate a sense of urgency about climate change by combining climate science with the emotional power of music to drive meaningful action.

Following the performance, we will have an open Q&A with SFCM musicians and climate scientists from the Berkeley Lab.

Return (Again) of the Rubin Institute

The Rubin Institute for Music Criticism is back at San Francisco Conservatory, in late October.

Dates: Thursday, October 25 to Monday, October 29, 2018
Location: San Francisco Conservatory of Music

The full schedule is here.

Who:

Writers Panel 
Members of the 2018 Rubin Institute Writers Panel represent some of the most respected journalists in the music industry: Gary Giddins, author of Bing Crosby: Swinging on a Star, The War Years 1940-1946 (Brown, Little, 2018); Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle critic;Anne Midgette, The Washington Post critic and author; Tim Page, professor, former Washington Post critic, and special contributor to Past / Forward: The LA Phil at 100 (Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2018); John Rockwell, writer, critic, and former editor of The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section; Alex Ross, The New Yorker magazine critic and author; Stephen Rubin, Institute benefactor and president of Henry Holt & Co.; and Heidi Waleson, The Wall Street Journal critic and author of Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2018). Members of the Writers Panel will present pre-concert lectures (tickets required) and a public panel discussion (free/no ticket required) over the course of the five-day symposium, offering the public the chance to hear firsthand from those at the forefront of music criticism.

Rubin Institute Fellows

Eighteen aspiring young writers from colleges, universities, and conservatories around the U.S. and abroad have been selected by the Writers Panel through an open application process, marking another first in the history of the Rubin Institute; previously, fellows were nominated by leadership at five partnering schools. The 2018 Rubin Institute Fellows are: Philip de Oliveira-Kent State University; Timothy Diovanni-Dublin Institute of Technology; Hannah Edgar-University of Chicago; Tamzin Elliott-University of Southern California; Peter Feher, John Masko, and Evan Pengra Sult-San Francisco Conservatory of Music; Jennifer Gersten-State University of New York at Stony Brook; Patrick Jankowski and Amanda Vosburgh-Yale University; Alice Koeninger, Rory O'Donoghue, and Parker Ramsay-Oberlin College and Conservatory; Jason McCool-Boston University; Grace Odell-University of Missouri-Kansas City; Madison Schindele-Goldsmiths, University of London; Brin Solomon-New York University; and Alexander Sutton-University of Virginia. Through the application process, these writers demonstrated an exceptional level of intellectual energy and an original approach to criticism, and, collectively, they represent an emerging vitality and renewal of spirit for the future of music journalism. 

A couple of personal notes:

• Enabling all interested participants to apply is a huge improvement over nominations from five "partner" colleges and universities.
• I'd suggest expanding that writers' panel by adding a freelancer and someone under 50, or someone on an "alternative" career path. One example: Tim Mangan, now on the staff of the Pacific Symphony. Or maybe Thomas May.
• Or even have a completely different panel each year, though I understand the advantages of consistency.
• The combo of the Rubin Institute and Getty Foundation is now funding five or so classical music critic positions at newspapers. This still isn't the solution to the problems facing the profession, though it's a partial solution for a few locations.
• The problem is still not a lack of people who can produce well-written and well-informed music criticism.
• I'm planning to attend a reasonable number of sessions this year!

SFCM Story, Part 2

The press release has arrived and is below the cut. Some highlights:

• SFCM is putting up a new building, which will open in 2020.
• The site is at Van Ness & Hayes.  immediately south of City Hall, across the street from Davies and catty-corner to the Opera House. Corrected, h/t Michael Strickland for the correction in the comments. You might remember one of the buildings currently on the site as formerly a big gift shop and ticket office for the Opera. 
• It will include student & faculty housing, as well as two concert halls, a restaurant, classrooms, rehearsal spaces, and a recording studio.
• Impressively, it will also include 27 apartments for residents of an apartment building that will be demolished to construct the SFCM building, at the same rates the residents are currently playing. No one will be permanently displaced. 
• The entire project is supposed to cost $185 million.
• $96 million has been raised toward a fundraising goal of $110 million
• (I think the $46 million gift must be in addition to the $96 million, but that is not explicitly stated.)
• The existing campus on Van Ness at Oak will remain in use.

SFCM Story, Before the Press Conference: A Big (BIG) Gift

Thomas May has the story in the NY Times (I am surprised that this wasn't embargoed until noon SF time or something, but seeing a tweet with this story on Twitter means I've scooped the Chron, SFCV, etc., so it's all good):

Capping the celebration of its 100th anniversary, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on Wednesday announced a gift of $46.4 million from the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, among the largest donations ever to an American music school.  

The gift will help fund construction of a $185 million, 12-story building on a site just south of San Francisco City Hall. Designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates and scheduled to open in 2020, it will include two concert halls, rehearsal spaces, high-tech studios and classrooms, and will provide housing for the student body.

The article doesn't have a map to indicate what the site "just south of SF City Hall" is, and looking at a map, I can't figure it out. Looking forward to the Conservatory's press release.

The William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation is local, with offices on Bush St.  It does not make grants to individuals. Its web site says:

The William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation supports nonprofit organizations in several areas including (but not exclusively) medical research, access to college, the arts, and higher education.

Possibly I'll have more thoughts on this later today.

UPDATE: This Chron article from 2015 has details on the location of the new building(s). H/T @phibetakitten for the link.

Something's Up at SFCM

I know this because I've gotten invitations to a press conference tomorrow, one that I can't attend, with hints of BIG NEWS TO COME. Originally, the Mayor of SF was going to attend, but now he will not. There will be other speakers, the press office has asked whether reporters are bringing photographers, etc.

There's just one hint in the email I received today:

We're about to redefine the musical life of the Civic Center.

No idea what's going on here, and I'd prefer not to speculate, but looking forward to the eventual press release about it!

Sunday with the Divas

As part of its centennial celebrations, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music has a possibly entertaining event coming up: a chance to hear Marilyn Horne, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt, and Patricia Racette in conversation. Stephen Rubin, of the Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, who is also a trustee of SFCM, will be moderating, but, um, his best strategy is very likely to stay the hell out of the way and let the four singers yak.

They've all had storied careers and I'm sure they've got more than enough good stories to tell. The proceeds will support the educational programs at the SF Opera and scholarships for SFCM's voice students, which explains the prices. I'll be about 2500 miles away, so I won't be there, alas.

Details:

Sunday, February 25 at 3:00 PM

Nourse Theater

Tickets: $100 Orchestra / $75 Loge / $50 Balcony

https://www.cityboxoffice.com/ordertickets.asp?p=9475&src=eventperformances