Back in 2025....

I published some articles last year that I never wrote about on the blog. It's never too late!

• Three Opera Singers on How They Built Their Careers, SFCV, May, 2025. If you've been attending the opera in the Bay Area for any length of time, you know Alex Boyer, Chung-Wai Soong, and Leandra Ramm, even if you're not sure you do. They've all sung roles of varying sizes with local companies; Soong and Ramm are both active in pro choruses here, including working as extra chorus at SF Opera. Boyer went on a couple of times last year as Brandon Jovanovich's cover at the Met in Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick. 
• Walking with Sister Helen, Opera Now, October, 2025. I spoke with Susan Graham, Joyce Di Donato, Jamie Barton, and Patricia Racette, who've all sung Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking, and with Frederica von Stade, who created Mrs. Patrick De Rocher, the mother of the condemned man. It was a great honor to speak with these magnificent singers, all of whom I've admired over a long period.
• Second Acts: Musicians Leaving the Spotlight to Find Something New, SFCV, October, 2025. An article about three classical musicians who are no longer performing, for different reasons. Nicole Cash, former associate principal horn the San Francisco Symphony, became an audiobook narrator after focal dystonia meant she couldn't continue as a horn player. Tenor David Lomelí became a consultant to opera companies around the world after digestive issues affected his singing. Elizabeth Rowe, former principal flute of the Boston Symphony and a magnificent player, became a leadership and executive coach (the circumstances are too complicated to describe briefly). 

Musicians leave classical music at different times in their careers and for a wide variety of reasons. It is a very tough and competitive business and it is difficult to get a career going in such a competitive field. If you're curious about this subject, web search will turn up podcasts, personal testimonies, and articles about individuals musicians. Elizabeth Rowe's case is unusual in that she had the kind of position you can stay in for decades (the legendary Doriot Anthony Dwyer held the BSO principal flute chair for 38 years), but various circumstances led her to a career change.

ZOFOMOMA

I don't know exactly where everyone was last Saturday night - Candide, maybe? - because the ZOFO concert at SFCM was seriously underattended, despite the known greatness of the piano duet and despite their world premiere performance of a suite of miniatures written for them as a sort of latter-day Pictures at an Exhibition. It was, in a word, great, and I reviewed it for SFCV.

I only wish I'd been able to say something about each of the works, and it was unfortunately only after I'd filed that I realized that a review consisting of a tiny miniature commentary on every one of them would have been entirely appropriate. Read my review here, and consider looking up the paintings in question, most of which can be seen on the web.

Compare & Contrast 32: Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI

Okay, this will be a somewhat unusual media round-up, because I am dipping into the past for some of my comparisons.

I saw Jordi Savall and a current incarnation of Hesperion XXI the other night at Zellerbach - a terrible venue for an unamplified Renaissance string ensemble, but, well, First Congregational wasn't available - and hoo boy was it dull and disappointing. Dull for reasons you can see in my review; disappointing because on record the Savall Cabal is anything but dull.

And yet, Joshua Kosman's 1997 review reflects what I heard Friday night, so I can't chalk up the problems to the absence of Montserrat Figueras. Then again, there's Alex Ross's 2005 review from The New Yorker, which memorialies a concert that's what I would have expected based on Hesperion's recordings. Allan Ulrich, in 2001, is in line with Alex Ross.

Maybe I should have just withdrawn from reviewing as soon as I saw that this year's Hesperion is a viola da gamba ensemble plus percussion plus theorbo/guitar. Yeah, make any old viola joke you'd like; I refrained in my review.

• Lisa Hirsch, SFCV
• Alex Ross, "The King of Spain," NYer, 2005
• Joshua Kosman, Chronicle, 1997
• Allan Ulrich, Chron/Ex, 2001

Not sure who else reviewed last week's program but I'm happy to link to other reviews.

As to the why of all of this: everyone in the group seemed a little bit in his or her own world, removed from each other and from the audience, including Savall. There were ensemble problems in a couple of numbers, where Savall himself seemed out of synch with the other instrumentalists; that was very strange. 

The Hesperion tour page shows you all of their concerts and the locations of those concerts. They're currently touring several different programs and playing 14 concerts (maybe 15, not sure who is doing what at "Conference") in different configurations in February. That's a lot of playing and a lot of travel.