International Women's Day

On International Women's Day, I can't do any better than point to composer Pauline Oliveros's 1970 NY Times essay on women composers. I am driven slightly mad by it, because what she said 55 years ago is still so true today. Take this, for example:

At last, the dying symphony and opera organizations may have to wake up to the fact that music of our time is necessary to draw audiences from the people under 30. The mass media, radio, TV and the press, could have greater influence in encouraging American music by ending the competition between music of the past and music of the present.

JFC, some things never change. Audience members who were under 30 in 1970 are now 55 and up. Then there's this:

The second trend is, of course, dependent on the first because of the cultural deprivation of women in the past. Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their scores or waited for later developments.

It's infinitely harder to get anywhere in classical music if you're a woman than if you're a man, from getting your music performed if you're a composer to getting into an orchestra or getting a principal position if you're an instrumentalist to getting a highly visible job if you're a conductor. Just think about how many top level orchestras in the U.S. have or about about to have women as their music directors: three (3). 

Those are the Atlanta Symphony, where Nathalie Stutzmann is music director; the Buffalo Philharmonic, an orchestra that seriously punches about its budget, where JoAnn Falletta has been music director for many years, following in the footsteps of Lukas Foss, MTT, and other fine conductors, and the New Jersey Philharmonic, where Xian Zhang is shortly moving to the Seattle Symphony. Do you think a woman will replace her? I suppose we can hope that one or more of the LA Phil, SFS, and Cleveland might hire women, not that I'm holding my breath over this.

And of course, you are way more likely to be harassed or raped than a man when you're in school or in a male-dominated organization like an orchestra.

Updated, March 9, because I forgot Stutzmann at Atlanta.

Breaking News from San Francisco Opera

War Memorial Opera House

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Well, not exactly, since there isn't a press release yet. What we have, though, is an article from The Guardian. The article starts by discussing John Berry, former artistic director of the English National Opera, but as it progress, it turns out that he's developing an opera about the opiod crisis, and eventuall you learn that Missy Mazzoli, composer of the magnificent Breaking the Waves, is writing the music to a story by Karen Russell and Royce Vavrek. Vavrek was the librettist for both Breaking the Waves and Du Yun's Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel's Bone.

And even deeper in the article, you learn that the San Francisco Opera is among the commissions of the new opera. It will have its premiere in 2026, though it's not clear from the article where the first performances will take place.

Representation

In my in-box, information from two California music festivals.

• La Jolla Music Festival, music director Inon Barnatan. Of approximately 60 works performed, two are by women of color and one by a Black man. So, 1/20th. Pretty sure one of the works by a woman is one movement of a larger piece.
• Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, music director Cristian Măcelaru, 15 composers featured, 7 are women. I can't quite tell what the story is for two of the concerts (Greg Smith: VIBE and In concert with Phillipe Quint), but of the 14 works listed, 7 are by women. Because of my uncertainty about those two concerts, I think this isn't quite 50/50 but it's so much closer to parity, and the works composed by women are all substantial. We're not seeing token 12 minute curtain-raisers here. Go, Cabrillo! (Me, I am particularly interested in Helen Grime's violin concerto, performed by Leila! Josefowicz!)

Missed Opportunity, or, I Can't Believe I'm Writing This in 2023.

The Alexander String Quartet almost always has a Saturday morning series at Herbst, accompanied by talks by composer/musicologist Robert Greenberg. This year's series is called Music as a Mirror of Our World: The String Quartet from 1905 to 1946. The title is....partially correct. It's a mirror of our world if you think only white men compose string quartets.

Here's the programming for the full series. For each concert, I've suggested an alternative quartet they might have programmed.

Program 1: Austria. Quartets by Schoenberg and Webern. Add Johanna Beyer String Quartet 1 or 2.

Program 2: Russia. Quartets by Stravinsky and Prokofiev. No obvious pick here, so let's go for the unknown-to-me Varvara Adrianovna Gaigerova, who wrote two strings quartets.

Program 3: Czechoslovakia. Quartets by Haas and Janacek. Vítězslava Kaprálová wrote eight string quartets; take your pick.

Program 4: United States. Quartets by Barber and Piston. Add Ruth Crawford Seeger's sole quartet.

Program 5: Austria. Quartets by Zemlinsky and Korngold. The loveliest girl in Vienna didn't get to write a string quartet, so let's move on to Johanna Müller-Hermann, who wrote two.

Program 6: United Kingdom: Quartets by Walton and Britten, both English, so "United Kingdom" isn't exactly accurate. Let's take any of Elizabeth Maconchy's superb quartets that were written in or before 1946.

My article Lend Me a Pick Ax was published in 2008, and I'm still having to write blog posts like this.

 

Rolling My Eyes, part 285

Found in The NY Times:

On Monday, for the first time in its 138-year history and as it returned from an 18-month closure, the Metropolitan Opera presented a work by a Black composer: Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” By opening the season with this work, the Met filled a gaping hole in its repertory at a time when the performing arts are rightfully being challenged to become more diverse. 

Here are all of the operas that the Metropolitan Opera has performed that weren't written by white men:

• Der Wald, Ethel Smyth (2 performances)
• L'Amour de Loin, Kaija Saariaho (8 performances)
• The First Emperor, Tan Dun (12 performances)
• Fire Shut Up in My Bones, by Terence Blanchard (7 performances)

That's 29 performances, total, of four operas. For contrast, looking at the Met's repertory report, La Boheme has gotten a total of 1344 performances, Aida 1175, and, scrolling way down past dozens of works, La Damnation de Faust and Der Freischütz have each gotten 30.

Staging Fire Shut Up in My Bones isn't filling a gaping hole. It is going to take years to do much about those gaping holes.

Opera America Commissions

Some excellent news about works in development that have received support from Opera America:

• Beth Morrison Projects (Brooklyn, NY) for In Our Daughter’s Eyes by Du Yun 

• Boston Lyric Opera (Boston, MA) for The Desert Inn (working title) by Ellen Reid 

• Guerilla Opera (Haverhill, MA) for HER:alive/un/dead: a media opera by Emily Koh 

• HERE (New York, NY) for A Practical Breviary: Terce by Heather Christian 

• Houston Grand Opera (Houston, TX) for Turn and Burn, a Rodeo Opera by Nell Shaw Cohen 

• Opera on Tap (Brooklyn, NY) for Joan of the City by Kamala Sankaram 

• Opera Orlando (Orlando, FL) for The Secret River by Stella C. Y. Sung 

• Opera Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) for The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli 

• The American Opera Project (Brooklyn, NY) for Precipice by Rima Fand 

The rest of the press release is after the cut. I'll just say that I'd love to see every one of these.

Music@Menlo 2020

UPDATED: Because I counted and originally published the 2019 numbers.

Well, I've got an email from Music@Menlo, and....wow, their roster of artists is something else. On this page, there's a 3 x 16 grid of artists, plus a row of 2 that is, 50 photos in the grid. There are 48 individuals and 2 string quartets, so, 56 individuals. Of these, 14 are women. (This is slightly better than 2019.)

That's completely astonishing, in 2020.

Of the works on the regular series of eight concerts, not one is by a woman. Not going to bother looking over the Carte Blanche and other series.

Good work, Music@Menlo!

The Soul of the Americas Doesn't Include Women

Music @ Menlo has a two-day Focus Residency coming up, called The Soul of the Americas. Here's the program that will be played in association with the residency:

May 8: Concert Program

COPLAND: El Salón México for Solo Piano
BERNSTEIN: Three Meditations from Mass (version for piano, cello, and percussion)
BARBER: Souvenirs for Piano, Four Hands, op. 28 
GOLIJOV: Mariel for Cello and Marimba
VILLA-LOBOS: Divagação for Cello, Piano, and Drum;
“A maré encheu” from Guia prático; and “O Polichinelo” from A prole do bebê no. 1 for Solo Piano
GINASTERA: Pampeana no. 2, Rhapsody for Cello and Piano, op. 21
GERSHWIN: Cuban Overture for Piano, Four Hands, and Percussion

Really nice to know that women don't have souls, or something like that, she wrote while listening to Florence Price, although Copland writing fake Mexican music and Gershwin writing fake Cuban music do count.

Oh, FFS.

Artimesia Gentileschi

Detail of Judith Slaying Holofernes

Yes, this is how I feel after writing this post.

This is perhaps the most tone-deaf programming imaginable: a two-day St. Louis Symphony Orchestra festival called History: Her Story, Our Future, where, you guessed it, all of the works programmed are composed by men.

From the orchestra's 2020-21 season brochure:

Note the number of women who wind up dead in the works above. I suppose that does represent what a sad percentage of men want, now and historically.

And....there's music composed by women elsewhere in the season. The composers include Joan Tower, Helen Grime, Jessie Montgomery, and others.

Isn't anyone at SLSO paying attention? This is a terrible communications failure and a terrible programming failure, not to mention the complete lack of self-awareness that went into these two programs.

"An opera by an exciting female composer", Coming Soon to an Opera House on Van Ness Avenue

Peter Sellars (who has nothing to do with Innocence) and Kaija Saariaho

Santa Fe, July, 2008

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

At San Francisco Opera's 2018 annual meeting, held in April that year, Matthew Shilvock mentioned a commission from "an exciting female composer." I reported on the meeting and listed a few exciting female composers in this blog post.

Now we know, thanks to the 2020 season announcement of the Aix-en-Provence Festival: it's Kaija Saariaho, and the new opera is called Innocence. Susanna Mälkki will conduct in France, and I hope here. The casting is pretty great.

The Aix Festival and SFO aren't the only commissioning organizations; the others are the Dutch National Opera, Finnish National Opera (of course), and the Royal Opera.

This was in Opera Magazine in the fall, and I listed the news on my Operatic Future Seasons page, but this is the first time I've mentioned it on the front page. Maybe there will be something in tomorrow's season announcement about the commission.

Note that the whole Aix opera schedule is stupendous: Wozzeck, Poppea, L'Orfeo, Cosi fan tutte, The Golden Cockerel.

How Far Can You Get If You're a White Guy?

Pretty far, it turns out.

Over on Twitter, there's a lot of justifiable outrage over an interview by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who were the showrunners - basically, the guys in charge - of HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones for TV. The outrage is because Benioff and Weiss knew, and admit that they knew, nothing when they talked HBO into giving them an enormous budget to make GoT. I mean, they use phrasing like "the first year was an expensive course in TV" and "we didn't know anything about costuming."

That's right: they were given tens of millions of dollars because they made a good pitch and they were white guys. They had potential. And it's pretty typical for white guys to be hired for something on the basis of potential rather than existing, verifiable accomplishment.

If you don't believe me, please cite similarly-scaled TV shows where black men or black women or white women or Asian men or Asian women who had little or no experience got to be the showrunners.

It's worth noting that one of the most successful opera composers of the 21st century got his first commission on the basis of potential. That would be Jake Heggie, composer of Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, It's a Wonderful Life, and other operas.

When he got the commission for DMW, he was working at San Francisco Opera in the communications department. He'd written a bunch of good songs; he had the support of some well-known singers; he had musical training (of course); I'm pretty sure he was and is a good pianist. All of this is beyond what Benioff and Weiss had.

But first opera commissions typically go to composers who have experience with writing large-scale orchestral works, which I believe was not case with Heggie. He got that commission from a big-budget opera company because, on the basis of his songs, he was seen as having potential.

The World of Grażyna Bacewicz

Grażyna Bacewicz

The intrepid folks at Bard Music West have just announced the details of their upcoming weekend of concerts, The World of Grażyna Bacewicz, which will focus on the great Polish composer, her contemporaries, and her successors. The programming is fantastic, to the point that maybe I will swap my Figaro ticket.

October 18 and 19, 2019
Noe Valley Ministry
1021 Sanchez St., San Francisco

Single tickets $20-$50. Ticket packages also available. www.bardmusicwest.org/tickets

Friday, October 18, 7:30pm 
1: A Rising Star

Grażyna Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 1
Igor Stravinsky: Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet 
Nadia Boulanger: Vers la vie nouvelle (Toward the new life)
Karol Szymanowski: Mazurkas, Op. 50 (selections)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski: Nocturne in B-flat Major 
Claude Debussy: Études for Piano (selections)
Claudio Monteverdi: Nine Madrigals (selections)
Bacewicz: Piano Quintet No. 1 

Saturday, October 19, 4pm 
2: From War to Warsaw Autumn

Bacewicz: Polish Capriccio 
Mélanie Clapiès: String Trio world premiere of commissioned work
Tadeusz Baird: Suita Liryczna (Lyric Suite) (Julian Tuwim) (selections)
Andrzej Panufnik: Warszawskie dzieci (Children of Warsaw) 
Panufnik: Hommage à Chopin – Five Vocalises for Soprano and Piano (selections)
Grażyna Bacewicz: selected songs for soprano and piano 
Bacewicz: Partita for violin and piano 
Bacewicz: Piano Sonata No. 2 
Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 4

Saturday, October 19, 8pm 
3: Evolution and Persistence – Her Legacy

Witold Lutosławski: Dance Preludes for Clarinet and Piano (selections)
Agata Zubel: Cadenza for solo violin
Alban Berg: Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5 
Marta Ptaszyńska: Katarynka for glockenspiel
Witold Lutosławski (“Derwid”): “I don’t expect anyone today” for soprano and piano (interpretation inspired by Agata Zubel’s improvisation)
Grażyna Bacewicz: Quartet for Four Cellos
Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 7 
Hanna Kulenty: Van for Piano Four Hands
Lidia Zielinska: Expandata for Snare Drum and Tape 
Bacewicz: Four Caprices for Violin (arranged for viola) 

NCCO's All-Male 2019-20 Season

New Century Chamber Orchestra has announced its 2019-20 season, and it's the kind of thing you just didn't see under Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg: an all-male season. Alas, because it's a good season with a lot of interesting and rarely-heard music, just that none of it was composed by women.

Fin de siècle 
September 26-29, 2019
Daniel Hope, Music Director & Concertmaster
Simos Papanas, Guest Concertmaster
Maxim Landos, piano

Thursday, September 26, 2019, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church Berkeley, Berkeley
Saturday, September 28, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Sunday, September 29, 2019, 3:00 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael

Ernest Chausson: Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings
            Simos Papanas, violin
            Maxim Landos, piano

Edward Elgar: Chanson de Matin
Elgar: Introduction and Allegro, Op. 47
Christian Sinding: Adagio from Suite im alten Stil, Op. 10
Jules Massenet: Méditation from Thaïs
Arnold Schoenberg: Notturno for Strings and Harp
Richard Strauss: Morgen for Violin and Strings

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Simone Dinnerstein Leads Bach
November 7-10, 2019
Simone Dinnerstein, piano

Thursday, November 7, 2019, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church Berkeley, Berkeley
Friday, November 8, 2019, 7:30pm, First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto
Saturday, November 9, 2019, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Sunday, November 10, 2019, 3:00 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael

Johann Sebastian Bach: Keyboard Concerto in E Major, BWV 1053
J.S. Bach/Busoni: Ich ruf zu dir
J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056
J.S. Bach: Keyboard Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Christmas with Anne Sofie von Otter
December 18-20, 2019
Daniel Hope, concertmaster
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano

Wednesday, December 18, 2019, 7:30 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto
Thursday, December 19, 2019, 7:30 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco
Friday, December 20, 2019, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley

Johann Sebastian Bach: “Schliesse, mein Herze, dies selige Wunder” from The Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
George Frideric Handel: “As with rosy steps the morn” from Theodora, HWV 68
Handel: “Cara sposa” from Rinaldo, HWV 7
Thad Jones: A Child is Born
Irving Berlin: White Christmas
Robert Wells: The Christmas Song
Traditional: O Tannenbaum
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano

Antonio Vivaldi: Winter from The Four Seasons
            Daniel Hope, violin

Handel: Concerto Grosso in D minor, Op. 6 No. 10, HWV 328
Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6 No. 8 "Christmas Concerto”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Beethoven in the Presidio
January 23-25, 2020
Daniel Hope, violin
Lynn Harrell, cello
Simone Dinnerstein, piano

Friday, January 24, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Presidio Theater, San Francisco

Ludwig van Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 5 in D Major, Op. 102 No.2
Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 “Kreutzer”
Beethoven: Piano Trio in E-flat Major, Op. 1 No. 1

Saturday, January 25, 2020, 7:30pm., Presidio Theater, San Francisco

Additional Performance:
Thursday, January 23, 2020, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley

Beethoven: Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56
            Daniel Hope, violin
            Lynn Harrell, cello
            Simone Dinnerstein, piano

Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Music of the Spheres
May 13-17, 2020
Daniel Hope, concertmaster
San Francisco Girls Chorus

Wednesday, May 13, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Bing Concert Hall, Palo Alto
Thursday, May 14, 2020, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley
Saturday, May 16, 2020, 7:30 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Sunday, May 17, 2020, 3:00 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael

Gabriel Prokofiev: Spheres
Johann Paul von Westhoff (Arr. Christian Badzura): Imitazione delle Campane
Philip Glass: Echorus
Michael Nyman: Trysting Fields
Karsten Gundermann: Faust
Arvo Pärt: Fratres
John Williams: Starkiller from Star Wars (Arr. for strings)
Gustav Holst: Mars and Jupiter from The Planets (Arr. for strings)

Gabriel Fauré (Arr. John Rutter): Cantique de Jean Racine, Op. 11
Aleksey Igudesmann: Lento
Karl Jenkins: The Armed Man – A Mass for Peace: Benedictus
            Featuring the San Francisco Girls Chorus
 

Cabrillo Festival, 2019

Well, well, Cabrillo has the tastiest and most interesting season in....I don't know how long. Kudos to music director Cristian Măcelaru for the 2019 programming. I'm so happy to say that I'd like to see all of these programs, so I may have a weekend or two in Santa Cruz ahead of me.

Besides the terrific lineup of works composed by women, note the illustrious guests, including proudly queer mezzo Jamie Barton, the great ensemble Roomful of Teeth, and violinist Nicola Benedetti.

Here's what the festival will be performing this year:

Friday, August 2, 8pm: NOTORIOUS
Nina C. Young: Agnosco Veteris (West Coast Premiere)
Carolyn Shaw: Entr’acte for string orchestra 
Melody Eötvös: The Saqqara Bird (West Coast Premiere)
Kristin Kuster When There Are Nine (Jamie Barton, mezzo-soprano; Roomful of Teeth,
 vocal ensemble) (World Premiere | Festival Commission)

Saturday, August 3, 7pm: CONTRASTSDu Yun: Kraken (West Coast Premiere)
Anna Clyne: DANCE for cello and orchestra (Inbal Segev, cello) 
(West Coast Premiere | Festival Co-commission)
Jake Heggie: The Work at Hand (Jamie Barton, mezzo; Inbal Segev, cello) (West Coast Premiere)
Dan Dediu: Levante (U.S. Premiere)

Sunday, August 4: 1pm: FREE FAMILY CONCERT
Clarice Assad: New Interactive Educational Work (Clarice Assad, piano and vocals)
(World Premiere | Festival Commission)

Sunday, August 4, 7pm: ROOMFUL OF TEETH IN CONCERT

Thursday, August 8, 7pm: COMMUNITY NIGHT
Pay-what-you-can community concert featuring members of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra

Saturday, August 10, 7pm: SECRET SONGS
Hannah Lash: God Music Bug Music (West Coast Premiere)
Preben Antonsen: Psalm Without Words 
(World Premiere | Pacific Harmony Foundation & Festival Commission)
Vivian Fung: Earworms (U.S. Premiere)
Tan Dun: Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women (Sarah Fuller, harp; microfilms) 
(West Coast Premiere)

Sunday, August 11, 7pm: WYNTON
Wynton Marsalis: Concerto in D for violin and orchestra (Nicola Benedetti, violin)
Wynton Marsalis: Blues Symphony (West Coast Premiere)

3 WORLD PREMIERE COMMISSIONS
Kristin Kuster: When There Are Nine
Clarice Assad: New Interactive Educational Work
Preben Antonsen: Psalm Without Words 

2 U.S. PREMIERES
Dan Dediu: Levante
Vivian Fung: Earworms

8 WEST COAST PREMIERES
Nina C. Young: Agnosco Veteris
Melody Eötvös: The Saqqara Bird
Du Yun: Kraken
Anna Clyne: DANCE for cello and orchestra
Jake Heggie: The Work at Hand
Hannah Lash: God Music Bug Music
Tan Dun: Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women
Wynton Marsalis: Blues Symphony

12 COMPOSERS IN RESIDENCEPreben Antonsen
Clarice Assad
Anna Clyne
Dan Dediu
Du Yun
Melody Eötvös
Vivian Fung
Jake Heggie
Kristin Kuster
Hannah Lash
Wynton Marsalis
Nina Young

GUEST ARTISTSJamie Barton, mezzo-soprano
Roomful of Teeth, vocal ensemble
Inbal Segev, cello
Clarice Assad, piano/vocals
Sarah Fuller, harp
Nicola Benedetti, violin

Music@Menlo 2019 Festival

Congratulations to Music@Menlo: in a season of 55 works, one was composed by a woman!

Considering that their season is arranged by decades, this is...unimaginative and shameful.

(By the way, your web site? There seems to be no way to find a list of the programs with all of the works on each, in chronological order. Stop being so clever and just give people a nice list. I'm lucky that I had a works list PDF so I could just count them, but I have no idea from it how the works are distributed by concert or who is playing them.)

Bard Music West in 2019

Bard Music West has a banner year coming up.

First, there's a new concert series, to be held in March, when I will inconveniently be doing jujitsu in Chicago (but the trip with include Hamilton and a certain SFS music director designate at the CSO in Strauss and Bartok):

DATES Unless otherwise noted, all concerts are “pay what you can” at the door.

Thursday, March 28, 2019, 8pm Center for New Music 55 Taylor Street, San Francisco 
Friday, March 29, 2019, 7:30pm Palo Alto (venue TBA)
Saturday, March 30, 2019, 1pm Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) 2155 Center Street, Berkeley Free with museum admission
Sunday, March 31, 2019, 2:30pm Residence of Composer Vivian Fung 
Please contact Bard Music West to RSVP for address at 415-857-1632 or info@bardmusicwest.org.
PROGRAM more program details to be announced in February 
Danny Clay – String Quartet + Toy Piano, for string quartet and toy piano 
Clay – Playbook for flexible instrumentation 
Gabriella Smith – Carrot Revolution for string quartet 
Works by Phyllis Chen, Joseph Haydn, and others

Then there's the Bard Music West Festival, which this year will be The World of Grazyna Bacewicz!!!

On October 18-19, 2019 at Noe Valley Ministry, Bard Music West will present its third festival celebrating Polish composer and virtuoso violinist/pianist Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969). The festival will illuminate Bacewicz’s incredibly rich body of work and, in the fiftieth year since her death, make a case for her inclusion among the great composers of the twentieth-century. Three concerts and a talk will dive into her life, music, inspirations, and contemporaries. 

“Witold Lutoslawski called Bacewicz ‘one of the foremost women composers of all time,’ but we believe that she was one of the great composers of the twentieth century, period. While she is well- known in her native Poland, she is rarely played in the United States. 2019 marks fifty years since her death and so it seems the right time to make a case for her inclusion in the canon of great twentieth- century composers. Our festival will be a rare opportunity to be immersed in her music which ranges from pure virtuosic fun to terribly moving statements on humanity. We also look forward to exploring her contemporaries from around World War II and its aftermath, many of whom are overlooked in their own right.” —Allegra Chapman, Artistic Codirector and Executive Director, Bard Music West

A virtuoso violinist and pianist, Bacewicz wrote over two hundred pieces of chamber music, virtuosic solo showpieces, concerti, and works for chamber orchestra and large-scale orchestra. Born in Poland, she studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and violin with André Touret and Carl Flesch. She was concertmaster of the Polish Radio Orchestra in the 1930s. During World War II, she continued to compose, giving secret underground concerts in Warsaw. Bacewicz won numerous awards for her compositions, and spent the last fifteen years of her life devoted solely to composition. 

To reiterate the important dates:

Concerts:

Thursday, March 28-Sunday, March 31, 2019, in various locations.

The World of Grazing Bacewicz:

October 18-19, 2019

Noe Valley Ministry

Women's History Month: Women in Classical Music

I am very, very belated posting news about podcasts I heard about some months ago.

Naomi Lewin, who writes, hosts, and produces podcasts called Classics for Kids, put together some podcasts on women in classical music for Women's History Month. Here's a list of them:

• Women Composers of the Past, from Hildegard von Bingen to Queen Lili'oulakani 
• Contemporary Women Composers 
• Women in History and Classical Music, which starts with Cleopatra and ends with Grace Hopper 
• What's It Like to Be a Conductor? , with JoAnn Falletta

Worthwhile any time of year!

Can't Quite Count

There was a dust-up on Twitter this afternoon between musicologist Dr. Kendra Leonard and the Brooklyn Art Song Society over women composers on the BASS's programs this season. I got involved because I was pretty sure Dr. Leonard was in the right, and BASS's Twitter account was tweeting....defensively.

Among other things, I said I'd post some numbers about the season, and here they are.

I'm looking at the 2018-19 season, which opened on October 5 with an all-Ives program. Unfortunately, because the organization's web site doesn't list every song by every composer, I can't provide exact numbers. But I'm very sure that there are many more works by men than by women being performed.

Among other things, there are eleven concerts, and Ives, Barber, Bernstein, Rorem, Copland, Gershwin and Wolf get programs all to themselves, for a total of 8 programs of the 11 (Wolf's Morike-Lieder are performed twice). No female composer gets a whole program or even half a program. One program has several women on it. Libby Larsen is on two programs.

It'd be nice if BASS would count the number of woks on each program so we can see exactly what the gap is between male and female composers.

UPDATE 10/31: Brooklyn Art Song Society has asked that I note their Ithaca College residency, at which they taught the songs of Libby Larsen. There was also a lecture about her.

Good for them! But 1) it doesn't change the count below 2) their web site doesn't state the length of the residency or their focus on Larsen, as far as I can tell. That's the kind of thing I would highlight if it were very important to me.


Male Composers Represented

Charles Ives (program to himself, songs on the touring program. Maybe 10 songs?)
Samuel Barber (program to himself, at least 13 songs)
Leonard Bernstein (program to himself, not sure how many songs are in Arias & Barcarolles. 8 songs on the program total, I think.)
Ned Rorem (program to himself; two cycles and selected songs. Say 10 songs?)
Aaron Copland (program to himself, at least a dozen songs)
George Gershwin (program to himself; hard to tell how many songs/pieces total, but let's say 10)
Daniel Felsenfeld (5 works)
Hugo Wolfe (Programs to himself; Morike Lieder complete - 23 songs? - given by two different sets of singers)
Michael Djupstrom (Oars in the Water)
Hershel Garfein (3 Rides)
David Ludwig (Songs from the Bleeding Pines)
James Matheson (Pessoa Songs)


Female Composers Represented

Libby Larsen (Songs from Letters; The Strange Case of H.H. Holmes; Pharoah Songs)

On one program:
Germaine Tailleferre (6 songs)
Ruth Crawford Seeger (2 works)
Clara Schumann (Selected songs)
Eve Beglarian (Selected songs)
Whitney George (one work)

A 70-Year Old, an 80-Year-Old, a Centenarian, and a 142-Year-Old Walk Into a Concert Hall.

And it doesn't matter that two of them are dead: these four are the face of new-ish music at San Francisco Symphony, based on the various documents comprising the 2016-17 season announcement.

It is really a glass-half-full, glass-half-empty season, and I do not say that because of the absence of P***** G**** from the schedule.

Let's start with the depressing half-empty part; a second post will cover the good stuff.

• No works composed by women are being performed this season.
• No works by African American composers are being performed this season.
• Two works by composers of color are being performed; both are from China, one is being played by a visiting orchestra from China.
• Works by seven (7) living composers are being performed this year. They are John (Coolidge) Adams, Steve Reich, Bright Sheng, Robin Holloway, Andrew Norman, Qigang Chen, and M. Tilson Thomas.

Once again, John Adams, Lou Harrison, and Charles Ives are the American Mavericks, joined this year by Steve Reich, who turns 80. Of the works being performed, the most important two are the local premiere of JCA's The Gospel According to the Other Mary, which sounds like a masterpiece based on the audio I have heard, and the composer's second violin concerto, Scheherazade.2. Looks like only one Reich work has been announced; one program is entirely TBA.

There are three SFS co-commissions, the Overture to the new opera Dream of the Red Chamber, by Bright Sheng (co-commission with SF Opera - I'm totally confused by this); Europa and the Bull, by Robin Holloway; and Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind by M. Tilson Thomas.

The remaining works by living composers are Play, by Andrew Norman; Angegram, by MTT (it's a charming, and slight, curtain raiser);  Enchantments oubliés, by Qigang Chen, played by the China Phil; 

We don't, of course, know what will turn up on the SoundBox schedule, and it's common not to announce the chamber music series until closer to the fall. Only seven living composers are represented of the many whose orchestral works will be performed this season. Of them, Adams and Reich are now in the Grand Old Man category, and one is the music director of the orchestra.

So there you have it: a season almost entirely made up of music by dead white men. People, it is 2015. It is time for this orchestra to do a better job of performing music by women and people of color. It is time to do a better job of performing music by the rarely-heard rather than recycling Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikowsky, Mozart, Dvorak, Bach, and the rest of the top twenty-five or fifty composers. See Alex Ross's recent article and blog post on rarely-heard symphonists. Why not, for crying out loud? 

You could consider making an explicit commitment to performing works by women, African Americans, and other composers of color, which would give you the following incomplete list of composers to choose from:

Thea Musgrave, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Johanna Beyer, Kaija Saariaho, Joan Tower, Judith Weir, Nicola LeFanu, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Roxana Panufnik, Amy Beach, Elizabeth Maconchy, Unsuk Chin, Chen Yi, Sheila Silver, Chinnary Ung, Olly Wilson, Florence Price, George Walker, Ulysses Kay, William Grant Still, Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Julius Eastman, Pamela Z, Ken Ueno, Lily Boulanger, Ethel Smyth, Cecile Chaminade, Vivian Fine, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Galina Ustvolskaya, Vítězslava Kaprálová, any of the hundreds of composers listed here and the hundreds of composers I've missed.

As usual, Los Angeles beats the heck out of SF in the new music category.

(Drafted the week of the season announcement, but I have had other priorities recently. Glass-half-full post to follow this week.)

Monday Miscellany

Various odd ends I've had floating around.

• Philip de Oliveira, writing in Scene, tells it like it is with the Cleveland Orchestra (and oh so many others): After 100 Years, the Cleveland Orchestra Continues to Ignore Women, Minorities, and Living Composers. The comments...well, mostly, don't read them.
• Jill Radsken discusses composer Shirley Graham's Tom-Tom: In 1932, this opera was hit. Why has no one seen it since? The answer to that question is pretty easy!
• The Beeb tells you about some women who've been erased from music history.
• Dennis Polkow bemoans the sacrifice of a broad operatic repertory in favor of musicals at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
• Justin Davidson on the Met Semiramide, which I liked a whole lot. 
• Jenna Ross at the Star Tribune: Minnesota music scene finally amplifying women composers.
• Aubrey Bergauer of the California Symphony: A Public Commitment to Diversity. "Because we have to start somewhere and be willing to be held accountable." Yep, yep, yep. And every orchestra should be doing this.
• Malcolm Guy, Boston Globe: Area musicians call on BSO to diversity programming. (The BSO's recently-announced 2018-19 season is markedly better than previous seasons.)
• Oldie but goodie: In the wake of the Levine allegations, the BSO planned to review its sexual harassment policies. Considering that their way of dealing with Dutoit was to warn women not to be alone with him....