Tuesday Miscellany

Christine Goerke, who recently made her role debut as the Siegfried Brunnhilde in the Canadian Opera Company's production of that opera, gave a hilarious interview to Robert Harris of The Globe and Mail...The Berkeley (Early Music) Festival has posted its 2016 schedule, although I've received no press release or other publicity about it. Unfortunately, it's opposite both the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and Ojai....Cal Bach has an attractive program of Carissimi, Charpentier, and Schütz. coming up the last weekend of February. They perform in SF, Palo Alto, and Berkeley....Opera Parallele and SFJAZZ present Terence Blanchard's Champion at SFJAZZ, from February 19 to 28....Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is leaving New Century Chamber Orchestra after the 2016-17 season...

Post-Weekend Miscellany

Sweden has issued a series of arts-related bank notes, and the individuals pictured include Ingmar Bergman, Greta Garbo, Astrid Lindgren, and Birgit Nilsson. Can't the US have pretty currency illustrated with people other than politicians??.....Ethan Iverson interviews tenor Mark Padmore...After consideration, I'm convinced that Alex Ross is right about Andris Nelsons, the BSO, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus...also see Alex's post on the performing arts in America....Patrick Vaz lists "Fun stuff [he] may or may not get to" for October (I also might or might not get to that stuff)...San Francisco Symphony has appointed Matthew Spivey, currently Vice President and General Manager of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO), to the position of Director of Artistic Planning. The press release says this about the job:

As Director of Artistic Planning for the San Francisco Symphony, Spivey will work closely with Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas in setting the Orchestra’s artistic direction and act as a member of the executive management team. He will oversee programming for the Orchestra’s 31-week subscription season, recording projects, commissioning programs, tours, festivals, and provide artistic direction for the SF Symphony’s 200+ concerts and presentations each season. The San Francisco Symphony serves one of the largest concert-going and music education audiences in the U.S.   

That means that he's the guy to complain to when we get a season that looks like this.

Festival Opera, stepping out of its usual habitat in Contra Costa County, will visit Oakland with an interesting double bill next month: Gustav Holst's Savitri and Jack Perla's River of Light. They'll be performed November 14-15, 2015, at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center Arts, 388 9th Street, Oakland, CA. Both chamber operas will be sung  in English. For more information, visit www.FestivalOpera.org. Yes, I'll be thinking about the fact that they're staging a pair of operas, composed by white men, about India.

Thursday Miscellany

San Francisco Opera has appointed Daniel Knapp as director of production, a job where he'll be in charge of a budget of $22 million that is used for stage operations, production stage management, technical administration, scene construction, costume shop and wig and make-up services for all War Memorial Opera House stage productions, as well as concerts, recitals and special events. Read the press release here....Daniel Wolf has a great posting up about Alan Hovhaness, putting him in context as a sometimes-experimental composer working outside the New York/East Coast mainstream in a variety of styles. Be sure to click the link to the composer's Symphony for Metal Orchestra...Alex Ross had an article in The New Yorker last month discussing the trouble with Beethoven and several books about the composer....Care of Long Beach Opera, which is performing his Therese Raquin soon, meet composer Tobias Picker at the Colburn School of Music in LA, on Sunday, November 16, 2014, from 1:00pm to 3:00pm, in Thayer Hall. Colburn is across the street, more or less, from Walt Disney Concert Hall....Locally, Cal Bach has a December program called A German Christmas, which they perform on December 5-7 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley...Magnificat performs Cavalli's Venetian Mass December 19-21 in Palo Alto, Berkeley, and San Francisco....On Sunday, November 23, Chora Nova performs Bruckner & Brahms at First Congregational in Berkeley.

Tuesday Miscellany

Jessica Duchen chatted with John (Coolidge) Adams and published an interview in the Independent, but honestly, I think that the more interesting Q&A is what she posted on her blog....I bet you will be shocked, shocked, to hear that Paul Krugman is rolling his eyes at Paul Ryan's latest pronouncements about poverty; it certainly doesn't help that Ryan omits or misrepresents data that would undermine his positions....At the Geek Feminism blog, Coral Sheldon-Hess talks about why women in technology groups are important....In the course of discussing ticket fees, Drew McManus links to a whole bunch of my past complaints about them; be sure to read the sane and intelligent comments....And lastly, Harold Shapero talks about studying with Nadia Boulanger after he graduated from Harvard. He didn't have to go to Paris, because she was sitting out the war in Cambridge, MA.

Friday Miscellany

John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer will be staged by Long Beach Opera next month at Long Beach's Terrace Theater, with performances on Sunday, March 16 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, March 22 at 2 p.m. Details here; I have a ticket for the Saturday performance.....Robert Rattray of the London artist management company Askonas Holt has been named Assistant General Manager for Artistic Affairs at the Metropolitan Opera, replacing the retiring Sarah Billingburst. Rattray will have major responsibilities in the casting, scheduling, and "liasing" areas. For plenty of snark about what this means, see Parterre Box....Bard SummerScape 2014 will focus on Schubert & His World this year. Among other things, the festival will feature the first US performance of Weber's Euryanthe in a century or so, as well as Schubert's Fierrabras. The festival takes place June 27 to August 17....Berkeley Festival (of Early Music) announces its schedule; June 1-8, 2014, with main stage concerts by Ensemble Vox Luminis, Ars Lyrica Houston, the Philharmonia Chamber Players, with guest soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Magnificat, Hopkinson Smith, and other groups. Bezuidenhout also presents a solo recital. As usual, the Fringe will have numerous performances...The all-day Hot Air Music Festival is back, on Sunday, March 2, from 12:30 to 9 p.m. at the SF Conservatory of Music. As usual, the lineup is delicious.

Wednesday Miscellany

The annual San Francisco Symphony Winter Sale ends Friday; get your tickets to lots of hot events (Carey Bell plays the Nielsen clarinet concerto; Peter Grimes; the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings; Mahler's 3rd, with Sasha Cooke; Ton Koopman's Bach Family programs; Christian Tetzlaff in the Bartok 2nd violin concerto, etc, etc.) before it's too late....Switchboard Music Festival will be on Saturday, April 12, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Brava Theater, 2718 24th in SF; their programming includes appearances by the Kronos Quartet, Mobius Trio, Grex, Gamelan X, Odessa Chen, Matthew Welch, Jordan Glenn and Michael Coleman, Splinter Reeds, The Operators, Dublin, Makeunder, and music by Anna Clyne, Julia Wolfe, Ryan Brown, and Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier. Tickets are a GREAT BARGAIN: $15 advance at switchboardmusic.com; $20 students/$25 general at the door....I'm mentioned in one of Steve Smith's contributions to the NY Times (classical) Playlist feature this week. Perhaps this will inspire me to finish a long-neglected posting about performances of Otello, live, on record, and on DVD, and why Martinelli is the only Moor for me....Stanford Live will host a live broadcast of Dallas Opera's production of Death and the Powers, an opera by Tod Machover, on Sunday, February 16 at 12:00p.m. The press releases notes that "Admission is free to the video simulcast but the public is encouraged to register in advance on the Stanford Live website at live.stanford.edu." Death and the Powers is conducted by Nicole Paiement, a great conductor and well known to opera audiences in the Bay Area; the cast includes Robert Orth and Joelle Harvey....Speaking of Paiement, Opera Parallele will present a tasty double bill on April 26, 27, and 28 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tiresias and Weill's Mahogany Singspiel....Die Fledermaus is the current Lamplighters' production at YBCA, with a new English libretto by David Scott Marley.

Sunday Miscellany

If you're still thinking about Peter Gelb and the Met - and who isn't? - take a look at this informative posting by William Madison....Next Sunday, June 3, at 4 p.m., Pacific Collegium will perform Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir and a world premier by Ivan Moody, in Oakland at St. Paul's on Grand. I plan to attend, having missed performances of the same work by International Orange Chorale a few years ago. (Thank you for the email, Micky!)....Scooping Cal Performances, Other Minds has announced their Nancarrow Celebration, which will be on November 3 and 4 at Cal Performances, Berkeley Art Museum, and Pacific Film Archive. Nothing on their home page yet, but I have the email right here....In London, rarescale has three free concerts coming up at St. Leonard's Shoreditch Church, on 1 June, 6 July, and 20 July. Civilized times that Patrick would approve of: doors open at 7 p.m., the concerts, lasting about 1 hour, are at 7:30....Mild mockery: Credit Suisse, which is a major sponsor of the NYPO and Alan Gilbert, has launched an iOS app about Gilbert, his inspirations, and his influences. Someone forgot to tell them that Android is the dominant smartphone operating system....Met Opera on Demand (the new name for the Met Player - guys, a shorter name is better, really) is free for the summer. The available programs include recent HD broadcasts, the Schenk Ring from 1990, and Troyens from 1984, so if you need to catch up....The results are in from Zerbinetta's classical music blogger survey!

Thursday Miscellany

Berkeley Playhouse (at the Julia Morgan Theater) has two weekends of performances of The Pirates of Penzance left, and the show sure looks like fun: "Not your traditional Pirates"....On Sunday, March 25, at the Italian Academy in NYC, Emmanuele Arciuli plays a recital that includes the US premiere of a work by Marcello Panni, Scelsi's Ka: Suite No. 10, Alban Berg's First Piano Sonata, and LvB Op. 110, aka, piano sonata No. 31.....This summer, the NY Philharmonic resumes its Concerts in the Park series, which I believe Alan Gilbert promised last year that they'd do. Dates are July 11 through 17 throughout the boroughs. Details are in this annoying PDF (guys, 1) PDFs are bad 2) having to comb through all that text to figure out where and when...can't you just put a nice block of concert info at the top?)....Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes perform Mahler and Shostakovich at SF Performances on April 23. Still wondering whether my travel schedule will let me attend....Tickets have just gone on sale for the 2012 Oregon Bach Festival, which takes place in Oregon, but I'm not actually sure whether it's in Eugene or Portland. Oh, wait: the reason I can't tell is that events are in Eugene, Portland, and five other cities. Okay! Dates are June 29 - July 15, 2012, in any case....The LA Jewish Symphony celebrates its 18th (Chai - Life) birthday with several concerts...

Operatic Miscellany

I didn't like Clark Suprynowicz's Caliban Dreams earlier this year at Berkeley Opera, but his upcoming MACHINE, to be presented by The Crucible, here in Oakland near W. Oakland BART, might just get me out the door. Tickets are $45 to $65 except for the closing night gala, when they're $150. Performances are on January 11-14 and 18-21, 2012. That's next month, if you've lost track....Farther afield in both time and space, The Industry, a Los Angeles organization that "produces new interdisciplinary work that merges music, visual arts, and performance to expand the traditional definition of opera," presents Crescent City, a new opera, from May 10 to 27, 2012. I am so there:

Crescent City is a hyperopera by composer Anne LeBaron, widely recognized for her work in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms, and librettist Douglas Kearney, a poet, performer and recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award. The opera, which incorporates installations by six contemporary LA-based artists, tells the epic story of a mythical city, decimated by one hurricane and on the verge of being wiped off the face of the earth by another, and the voodoo priestess determined to save it. A roving band of revelers spreads chaos throughout the streets of the city, capturing the action of the opera with live video along the way. 

Their second production will be Gordon Beeferman's The Rat Land.....On the other side of the country, Opera Manhattan has proclaimed December 23 Hansel & Gretel Day. I'll drink to that; Humperdinck's great opera is among my favorites. Go see it soon, at Opera Manhattan or, if you want to pay a lot more for a seat much farther from the stage, at the Met, where you can see Richard Jones's wonderful Welsh National Opera production.

Monday Miscellany

I have four performances to write up; of course, the programs are all elsewhere. To mark the day:

Dan Wakin reports on the NYPO's search for a replacement for retiring president & CEO Zarin Mehta; the local angle is that Brent Assink of the San Francisco Symphony was approached and decided to stay in SF....The Berkeley Hillside Club has a couple of enticing concerts coming up with members of the SFS: Symphony Players (includes Peter Wyrick, Jonathan Vinocour, and others) in Mozart & Mendelssohn string quintets on Sunday, Nov. 27 at 7 p.m.; Sarn Oliver, Mariko Smiley, and Robert Pollock play a wide range of trios and duets, by Oliver, Pollock, Edward T. Cone, Milhaud, and Takemitsu on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m...In London, the New Queen's Hall Orchestra starts a Brahms cycle on Nov. 23, celebrating their 20th anniversary....The Princeton Symphony Orchestra, which has consistently interesting and thoughtful programming, has a newly redesigned web site....So does the mighty Boston Symphony Orchestra; you should have seen me tweeting bug reports to them last week....Seventh Avenue Performances has a good-looking season with lots of early music...

Sunday Miscellany: From My In-Box

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has a grand radio broadcast series on KUSC, starting this afternoon at 4 p.m. with Turangalila. Want to catch E-PS's Duke Bluebeard's Castle? It's on April 17....The Sanford Dole Ensemble has what sounds like a terrific upcoming program: James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross and Robert Kyr's new On the Third Day, which the Ensemble commissioned. It's at one of my favorite venues, St. Gregory of Nyssa, 500 De Haro in SF, on April 17 at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. $30/$25/$20...We hear a lot of talk about how musical organizations need to connect with their communities. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is conducting a four-week food drive in Boston. (Yes, disgracefully, people go hungry in the United States.) If you're in the Boston area, consider donating through the BSO's actual or virtual food drive; in Alameda County, where I live, consider donating now or at another time to the Alameda County Community Food Bank. Unemployment in Alameda County is over 10%, so a sad number of our fellow citizens are suffering this year.....WQXR has a new opera blog, written by Fred Plotkin and Olivia Giovetti. Looks good so far!....The Napa Valley's Festival del Sole has announced its upcoming season...This week's San Francisco Symphony program should be great: Osmo Vanska conducts a world premiere by Thomas Larcher, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with concertmaster Alexander Barantschik playing the very violin on which the premiere was played, and RVW's A London Symphony, a work you don't get to hear very often in these, that is, American, parts.

Sunday Miscellany

Powerhouse percussionist Steven Schick has been appointed artistic director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. I saw him in Los Angeles in 2007, playing Kaija Saariaho's Six Japanese Gardens; he was tremendous. This is a great thing for SFCMP, and for us, if we get to hear him locally....Speaking of SFCMP, their next concert is on Monday, February 28, 8 p.m., at Herbst Theater in S.F. They are playing works by Ligeti, Du Yun, Ronald Bruce Smith, and Brian Current; Donato Cabrera conducts....LA Opera presents two performances of Britten's Noye's Fludde, at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 19, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which is not far from the opera house. Richard Paul Fink, just off a run as Henry Kissinger at the Met, and Kate Lindsey lead the cast; James Conlon conducts. Tickets go on sale tomorrow...Stanford Lively Arts presents the Bay Area premier of Steven Mackey and Rinde Eckert's Slide; eighth blackbird joins them. Slide is just another thing to try to get to on what I am casually calling Hell Weekend: it's on Saturday, March 5, 8 p.m., at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on the Stanford campus....Opposite this and several other don't-miss performances is the Other Minds Festival, which is chock full of new music. It's on March 3, 4, and 5 at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. Featured composers include Kyle Gann, Louis Andriessen, Agata Zubel, and others.

American Bach Soloists plays a tasty program of Handel and Purcell on February 25, 26, 27, and 28 in Belvedere, Berkeley, SF, and Davis. I'm not linking to their web site because it plays music at you whether you want it to or not; that music also has nothing to do with the upcoming program....More for Hell Weekend: California Bach Society, whose web site is more polite than ABS's, performs music of Buxtehude on March 4, 5, and 6, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley. Paul Flight conducts; I'm sure it will be great....And last but far from least, over the same damn weekend, the bravura contemporary music chorus Volti sings music of Kui Dong, Diesendruck, Hearne, and Lang, in San Francisco, Mill Valley, and Berkeley....If you don't have enough to do the first weekend of March, go see the Merce Cunningham Dance Company on its valedictory tour, at Cal Performances.

Wednesday Miscellany

The Boston Symphony Orchestra is starting an early-evening Friday concert series, similar to SFS's no-longer-called-that 6.5 series. The BSO calls the series Underscore Fridays; one of the programs will feature Thomas Ades's BSO debut....Mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao was on Good Morning America a couple of weeks; heart-warming, and I wish her the very best in her new marriage and with her health....Music@Menlo has released an eight-CD set of performances from the 2010 fesrtival, Maps and Legends....The Morgan Library & Museum is putting its magnificent collection of music manuscripts on line, so it's now possible to examine these treasures without traveling to New York City or having the required references for using the reading room there. I am forever grateful that my mother took me there for visits starting when I was surprisingly young; it remains one of my very favorite museums in the world, and I've seen many great shows there. If you missed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity earlier this year to see the Hours of Catherine of Cleves disassembled, you can still enjoy the on-line digital exhibit of the book....Nicola Luisotti was awarded the Puccini Prize by the Fondazione Festival Pucciniano on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of La Fanciulla del West, which Luisotti conducted at the Met. Congratulations, Maestro! And....San Francisco Opera has updated its web site...again....

Saturday Miscellany

Catching up on lots of upcoming concerts. We're at saturation point here, that time when so much is going on that hard choices need to be made.

November

New Century Chamber Orchestra has concerts with composer and violinist Mark O'Connor this week, in sundry locations. O'Connor plays a variety of styles and leads some great music ed. programs for kids around the country....Pamela Z performs in a private home in Pacific Heights on December 2; limited seating, sliding scale donation. She is a fantastic performer/composer and seeing her up close is a treat....Chalice Consort, under new director Davitt Moroney, has concerts this weekend (starting last night...sorry!) of music by Simone Molinaro...International Orange Chorale's November program includes Milton Babbitt's "Music for the Mass," and if ONLY their concerts weren't opposite the Chora Nova dress rehearsal and concert, I would so be there. They perform on November 19 at 5 p.m. at 55 Second St. in San Francisco, November 20 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mark's Lutheran, S.F.....Bryn Terfel sings at Cal Performances on Nov. 20, yet another program I'll be missing.

December

San Francisco Choral Artists, under Megan Solomon, perform on Dec. 4, 5, 11, and 12 at various locations and times; the program spans the centuries and takes in a whole bunch of countries and styles. Should be lots of fun!..That same weekend, California Bach Society performs Rosenmuller's Weihnachtshistorie, choral music telling the Nativity story, on December 3, 4, and 5, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley. The Whole Noyse joins them; the music in the polychoral Venetian style and should be thrilling....Also thrilling, Magnificat performs Charpentier's Messe de Minuit, December 17, 18, and 19, in Menlo Park, Berkeley, and San Francisco.

I know there's more happening that first weekend in December, in the way of recitals and other concerts; will possibly catch up at some point.

Sunday Miscellany

Local

Mostly Motets, which rehearses in San Francisco and Berkeley on Sunday afternoons, is auditioning singers for all parts. Email the group at Auditions@MostlyMotets.com; audition details are here....San Francisco Renaissance Voices (Todd Jolly, Dir.) has another great season of Renaissance choral music and early opera coming.  There's a Spanish music concert built around two major works by Juan de Esquival Barahona; a Boar's Head concert and feast; a program called The Music of Joy, featuring works of Josquin, Victoria, Byrd, Gibbons, Banchieri, Tallis, and Purcell (it doesn't get much better than that lineup); and an early opera program....For that matter, catch SFRV's opening gala concert, on October 2 at 7 p.m.: An Evening at Elizabeth's Court.Music, food, and drink will be involved....At 8 p.m. tonight, Sunday, September 12, Nic McGegan hosts a one-hour program on Mozart on KDFC, 102.1. It's an advance for Phil Baroque's opening program, which features fortepianist and improviser extraordinaire Robert Levin. Additional radio shows follow, all at 8 p.m. on Sundays on KDFC, except when that slot is taken by San Francisco Opera broadcasts...Dane Ruhdyar week is coming up at Other Minds: Monday, September 27 at Swedenborgian Church (2107 Lyon St., SF, 7 p.m. panel, 8 p.m. concert) and Wednesday, September 29, at Valley Presbyterian Church (945 Portola Road, Portola Valley, 7:30 concert).

Out of Town

Met benefactor and board member Dr. Agnes Varis donated $250,000 to Opera Orchestra of New York (OONY) to support their upcoming production of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine. The performance is in memory of tenor Richard Tucker and dedicated to Dr. Varis's late husband Karl Leichtman. Marcello Giordani and Chiara Taigi star in the March 2, 2011 performance....One World Symphony of NYC opens its season on September 17 and 19 in Brooklyn and Manhattan, respectively, with a program that includes Lennon (John), Strauss, Messiaen, Shostakovich, Sung Jin Hong, and others. I am intrigued especially by the orchestration of part or all of the great Quartet for the End of Time. 

Tuesday Miscellany

Local to Me (San Francisco Bay Area)

Magnificat Baroque opens its 2010-11 season with John Blow's Venus and Adonis, with performances on October 8 in Menlo Park at St. Patrick's Seminary, October 9 in Berkeley at St. Mark's Episcopal, and October 10 in San Francisco at St. Mark's Lutheran.... San Francisco Opera's Ring Festival starts early, with classes taught at SF Conservatory by composer Conrad Susa; $165 for five two-hour classes taught on Saturdays starting September 24. Phone the conservatory at 415-503-6283 or register online....San Francisco Performances will have $20 Salons at the Rex again; performers include the sensational young soprano Leah Crocetto, the equally sensational soprano Heidi Melton, and killer pianist Sarah Cahill playing Scriabin, Rudhyar, and Crawford Seeger....Speaking of Rudhyar, Other Minds has a two-program Rudhyar in Retrospect celebration on September 27 (Swedenborgian Church, SF) and 29 (Valley Presbyterian Church, Portola Valley).

Out of Town

Want to try out the Met Player, which gives you access to a couple of hundred historic Metropolitan Opera radio and TV broadcasts going back as far as the 1930s? You can sign up for a free 7-day trial (or rent an opera for 30 days or subscribe on a monthly or yearly basis)....LA Opera will be having an Opera of the Day discount price from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time, for a specific production, performance, and seating section. To find out today's special offering, visit the company's web site or follow them on Twitter or Facebook....Seiji Ozawa turns 75; you can wish him a happy birthday at the BSO's Facebook page or listen to a selection from his 1999 recording of Carmina Burana.  The BSO has also posted a PDF listing all of his recordings with the BSO....Metropolitan Opera Live in HD tickets go on sale to the general public next week. Be there or be square, especially if it's the only way you'll get a look at the upcoming Lepage Ring, Le Comte Ory (Florez, Damrau, DiDonato), and a few other operas worth seeing. (That link goes to the priority ordering page because I ponied up for advance ticketing.)

Waaaaay Out of Town

But I wish I could go anyway: Dancer in the Dark, a new opera by Poul Ruders, based on a screenplay by Lars von Trier, premiers at the Royal (Danish) Opera on September 5. There's a trailer at the opera's web site (Danish and English). The work will be performed in Germany, Sweden, and New York (one of these things is not like the others) in 2011.

Sunday Miscellany

News, upcoming events, etc.

• The last performance of Berkeley Opera's Legend of the Ring is this afternoon at 2 p.m., at El Cerrito High's excellent theater. Hear some terrific singing and a novel production in a small theater!
• Concert presenters: Enter your programs for the whole year for inclusion on San Francisco Classical Voice's performance calendar. You do need to be a registered user of the site.
• SFCV also has a new Musicians for Hire directory!
• Deutsche Grammophon is celebrating Mahler's birthday in style. Among other things, you can vote for a People's Cycle of the symphonies. Right now, Kubelik's First and Mehta's Second are getting the most votes for those symphonies. Mehta? Love his opera recordings but I'm not convinced his style is right for Mahler.
• California Bach Society's Summer Choral Workshop is on Saturday, August 21, 2010, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. They're singing through Hidden Treasures of Mozart and Haydn. I attended this last year, and I'd go again except that I sang the major works in 2006 with the Haydn Singers. $45, includes lunch, a great opportunity to work with Paul Flight, who is a terrific conductor. It's in Palo Alto and worth the drive if you're not on the Peninsula. Registration closes on August 14.
• Speaking of Cal Bach, they're auditioning all voice parts on August 25. Read about the repertory for the 2010-11 season here.

Wednesday Miscellany

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers is putting on a haiku contest, via Facebook; yes, I forwarded the press releases to Patrick already....in other violin news, Lara St. John, about whom I blogged long ago, and her brother Scott St. John, have a new recording of two Mozart Sinfonia Concertante, recorded with The Knights. Unfortunately, the press release doesn't include a URL for the recording, so I'm linking to her home page....

The Hot Air Music Festival presents Musical Textual: Where Music and Text Combine, on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 21 and 22, 7:30 p.m. both days, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. No link yet, but the program's tasty: Elliott Carter's song cycle A Mirror on Which to Dwell and a new fully-staged song cycle by Wolfgang Thompson and Matthew Cmiel. The price is also right: $10 advance/$15 door; advance purchase via Brown Paper Tickets.

A plea to publicists: could you possibly put the important information in the body of email rather than in a separate PDF? And include links? And make the links obvious and hard to miss?

Even more violin/new music news: the intrepid Cornelius Duffalo, of ETHEL and Ne(x)tworks, continues his Journaling series in New York City, with a program on August 15, 2010, at The Stone in NYC. He's playing music by ijay Iyer, Joan Jeanrenaud, Kenji Bunch, Paola Prestini and Daniel Felsenfeld....looking at The Stone's August schedule, I see that pianist Sarah Cahill is also playing there, on August 3.

Annals of Human Stupidity

Those of you who track my movements probably know that I've been in NYC on business for almost three weeks. I'm staying in corporate housing run by Marriott, in a two-bedroom apartment that has somewhat more personality than George Clooney's midwestern studio in Up in the Air.

There's one laundry room, on the ground floor. Even though I bought more clothing than I needed, I've had to do laundry twice in three weeks.

So, to do laundry here, you have to purchase a little debit card. You put a $10 bill - no more, no less, no other way to pay - into a machine and it gives you a card with $5 on it. That's right. You pay $5 for the card. If you need more money than that to do laundry - and trust me, you do - you reinsert the card, then put a $5, $10, or $20 bill into the same machine. OR, you can put the card into the adjacent machine and add laundry money to it using your debit or credit card. But you can't buy the card and the initial deposit using a debit or credit card, because the machine that takes plastic doesn't dispense cards. It only adds money to them.

That's right. It's 2010, and the designers of these machines couldn't figure out a way to combine their functions. Or to allow people to use coinage in them. Or to give change back from a $20 bill.

Presumably He Didn't Marry Her For Her Name

Mr. Kunzel is survived by his wife of 33 years, Brunhilde.