Tweeting During Concerts

PDQ Bach got there first:

Read what Matthew Guerrieri has to say about tweeting and Twitter.

Memo to San Francisco Opera Copy-Editors

The name of the opera is Il Trovatore for a reason, and no one goes to see this opera primarily because of the baritone singing the Count:

Verdi's audience favorite Il Trovatore features intense action and an all-star cast led by Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Bay Area Composers III: Clark Suprynowicz

Composer Clark Suprynowicz's videos are hosted on his personal web site, so the videos can't be embedded here. But you should definitely check out a few clips of his opera Chrysalis, which Berkeley Opera performed a few years ago:

• Buffy Baggott and Marnie Breckenridge, Scene 2
• Buffy Baggot and the chorus, Scene 4
• John Minagro, Marnie Breckenridge, and the chorus, Scene 12

I missed this and I am so sorry! Happily, Suprynowicz has a number of major works in development, with hoped-for premieres over the next two years:

• Caliban Dreams, an opera with libretto by Amanda Moody. The composer and librettist are in discussions with Berkeley Opera and the 6th St. Playhouse in Santa Rosa for a 2011 premiere. Caliban Dreams will feature tenor John Duykers.
• The Machine, an opera with libretto by Mark Streshinsky, planned as a January, 2011 premiere at The Crucible in Oakland, and featuring bass Kenneth Kellog, whom you may have seen at San Francisco Opera in the last couple of years.
• A musical in development with playwright Tanya Barfield, about the black revolutionary movement of the 1960s.

Watch his web site for more information on those works!

L'Oiseau de Feu

Here's birthday boy Igor Stravinsky conducting the end of The Firebird, London, 1965, in a lovely and soft-grained performance:

Today's Google logo should eventually be on permanent display here.

Bonus clip: Stravinsky conducting sometime in the 1920s. Silent footage with the orchestra in cramped quarters. The composer made some records in the 20s and 30s with the Walter Straram Orchestra; could this footage be from one of those sessions? Do you have any idea what the work might be?

Online Music Journalism Roundup

Alex Ross had a few wry comments the other day about the state of journalism in general and class music criticism in particular. San Francisco Classical Voice may have been the first site of its kind - we're ten years old now - but we're not going to be the last. Here are the nonblog online music journalism sites I know about:

• San Francisco Classical Voice, covering the Bay Area
• Boston Musical Intelligencer, under the leadership of Robert Levin
• Chicago Classical Review, looking at the Chicago music scene
• artscriticATL, in Atlanta
• South Florida Classical Review, in S. Florida
• NewMusicBox, covering the new music scene
• Sequenza21, which is so huge it seems like more than an umbrella for composer blogs.

More?

Garden of Memory 2009

It's that time of year again: the summer solstice is approaching, and at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, diverse Bay Area musicians perform new and recent music. As usual, there's a fantastic lineup.

June 21, 2009

Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue
Oakland, Ca

5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Admission is $15 general, $10 students and seniors, $5 kids under 12 (kids under 5 are free). Tickets available from www.brownpapertickets.com.

For information, contact New Music Bay Area at listings@newmusicbayarea.org or call Allison at (510) 228-3207.

Read all about it here.

Twas the Eighteenth of April...

No, wait, it's not. But this ride - er, run - will get the BSO some amusing attention, and maybe a few bucks, assuming nothing unfortunate takes place:

On June 29 and 30, fourteen Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians, several of their family members, and six staff members will run the 150 miles between Symphony Hall in Boston and the Main Gate of Tanglewood in Lenox, to mark the beginning of the 2009 Tanglewood season, which opens with an all-Tchaikovsky program led by BSO Music Director James Levine on Friday, July 3. BSO bassist Todd Seeber and BSO violinist James Cooke, both longtime runners, conceived of the Run to Tanglewood.

At 2 p.m. on June 29, Todd Seeber, introduced by a brass fanfare and starter pistol, will lead several runners from the Symphony Hall Stage Door on the first leg of the run. The run will continue over 32 legs, each between 3.5 and 6 miles, and will arrive at the Tanglewood Main Gate at approximately 1:15 p.m. on June 30, in anticipation of the first BSO rehearsal at Tanglewood on July 1 and the opening night program on July 3. Each leg will be run by one to four participants. The average run pace will be 6 miles an hour or 10-minute miles.

The Lenox community will be invited to Tanglewood to cheer the runners on the final leg of the run from the Tanglewood Main Gate to the Tappan House on the Tanglewood grounds. “Being avid runners ourselves and knowing several other orchestra musicians who love running as much as we do, Todd Seeber and I thought it would be incredibly fun to organize a relay run from Symphony Hall to Tanglewood as a unique way to bring attention to the opening of the 2009 season,” said James Cooke, BSO violinist. “We’re thrilled that the staff agreed and that a few of them will be joining us for the race. With friends and family sponsoring us, we also hope to raise a few funds for the BSO.”

For further information about the run or to sponsor a runner, visit tanglewood.org/relay.

Postscript to Pastreich

The following was posted in the comments to an earlier posting, and I thought it should be more prominently displayed:

As musician representatives who worked closely with Peter Pastreich during his consultancy for the Honolulu Symphony in 2004-05 (one as orchestra committee chair, another as symphony board representative, the third as union business agent), we feel an obligation to respond to and correct the misinformation that has been put forward about his time here.

Mr. Pastreich spent most of a season investigating, then searching for and helping implement solutions to some of the deep dysfunction undermining the HSO. The Musicians already had a high opinion of his skills from his previous work here; during his 2004-05 consultancy, our respect for his honesty, commitment and ability only grew. His recommendations - which did not include his being offered any position with the organization - seemed to us exactly what was needed, at long last, to improve the HSO’s situation. So, when the Symphony's executive director left suddenly (not at Mr. Pastreich's instigation) and the board's executive committee unanimously asked him to step in as interim, we wholeheartedly concurred.

Unfortunately, key board leadership had an unexplained change of heart and withdrew their support for what the executive committee had decided, so Mr. Pastreich felt he could no longer accept the position and ended his consultancy. It was as a result of his leaving (and not the other way around, as mis-reported by the SF Classical View) that several key board members (including the State's former First Lady, the head of one of the largest banks in the State, and the publisher of the major newspaper) then resigned. These board members (some of the most important community leaders the Symphony has ever had on its board) had wanted to help the HSO meet its challenges and appeared to welcome Mr. Pastreich's experience, vision, and insight. Once support for Mr. Pastreich was withdrawn, however, we musicians could easily see why they would want nothing more to do with a board that would refuse a great opportunity when it was offered.

It's sad to us that such a well-documented and, for us, quite painful story about a pivotal time in the Honolulu Symphony's history could be so twisted around and portrayed as fact. The truth is that Mr. Pastreich's involvement led to one of the most hopeful moments in the HSO's recent history, and we continue to have the greatest respect, affection and gratitude for Mr. Pastreich and what he tried to achieve here.

-Ken Hafner (trumpet), Steve Flanter (viola), Steve Dinion (percussion)

I guess the newspapers articles I cited got things very wrong, and I'd love to see other reporting on the subject.

Post-Script to Auf wiedersehn, Donald

There could not possibly have been enough time and money for it, but I wish you'd done Gurrelieder instead.

Compare and Contrast 17

Sharp disagreement over the new San Francisco Opera production of La Traviata and over the merits of the singers:

• Janos Gereben loves it.
• So does Richard Scheinin.
• Joshua Kosman is not feeling the love, not one bit.

My tickets are for the second cast (Futral/Lomeli/Powell), but it looks like I will have to see Netrebko, et. al., as well.

St. Lawrence String Quartet: Three Free Concerts

The St. Lawence String Quartet is giving three free concerts at noon (more or less) on the Stanford campus, Palo Alto.

Dates: June 29, July 1, and July 3, 2009

Place: Dinkelspiel Auditorium

Time: 12:15

Limited seating, come early!

The Sharing Solution

My friend Emily Doskow has a new book out, The Sharing Solution, written with Janelle Orsi. It's a legal and practical guide to sharing housing, childcare, transportation, gardens, and other useful resources. Here's a list of the events associated with the publication of the book.

Launch Party at the Berkeley Ecology Center

Friday, June 12 at 7:00pm

2530 San Pablo Avenue

Berkeley, CA

www.ecologycenter.org

http://www.ecologycenter.org/calendar/event.php?eventID=29078

Reading at Laurel Book Store

Thursday, June 18 at 7:00pm

4100 MacArthur Blvd (Laurel District)

Oakland, CA

www.laurelbookstore.com

Reading at Copperfield’s Bookstore

Thursday, June 25 at 7:00pm

138 North Main Street

Sebastapol, CA

www.copperfields.net

Reading at A Great Good Place for Books

Wednesday, July 8 at 7:00pm

6120 LaSalle Avenue (Montclair neighborhood)

Oakland, CA

www.ggpbooks.com

Reading at Diesel, A Bookstore

Wednesday, July 29 at 7:00pm

5433 College Avenue (Rockridge neighborhood)

Oakland, CA

diesel.booksense.com

Authors’ Sharing Solution Blog:

www.sharingsolution.com

Sharing Solution Facebook Site:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Sharing-Solution/201087280200

Articles/Blogs about The Sharing Solution:

East Bay Express: Share and Share Alike: Two Berkeley authors explain how sharing can save the planet

The Story of Stuff Blog with Annie Leonard: The Sharing Solution

MacArthur Metro book review

And watch for us in the July issue of Sunset Magazine and an upcoming issue of Ode Magazine

Keeping Score, 2009

The MTT/SFS series Keeping Score continues with three programs this coming October, 2009. Check your local PBS listings for times. (I'm half-expecting these to be on at 2 p.m. on Sundays or some other time when I'd rather be outdoors, given my local PBS station's lack of commitment to concert music.)

Episode One: With Symphonie fantastique, Hector Berlioz confessed his unique artistic vision. It was a symphonic love letter, part psychological self-portrait, part fantasy about the life of an artist, and it expressed his passion for a beautiful woman. Michael Tilson Thomas searches for the inspirations of Berlioz and his music, from his roots in the French Alps to the theater in Paris where the work was premiered, and reveals the musical secrets of this greatest of Romantic symphonies.

Episode Two: American composer Charles Ives created his Holidays Symphony as a haunting sonic portrait of New England at the turn of the 20th century, at turns sentimental and chaotic. Michael Tilson Thomas explores the riddle of Ives the loyal son and businessman versus Ives the musical maverick who made listeners confront their understanding of what music could be. Filmed on location in New England and New York City.

Episode Three: The Fifth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich is the story of a fall from grace and redemption. Shostakovich was the golden boy composer until, virtually overnight, his patriotism was questioned and condemned in the most public way possible. Written in 1937 in Stalinist Russia, the Fifth Symphony marked his triumphant return. But the question remains: what did the composer mean to say with this enigmatic music? In scenes filmed in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony offer clues to unlocking Shostakovich’s musical secrets and make the case for how this symphony may have saved his life.

More at Keeping Score.

The Revenge of the Dead Indians: In Memoriam John Cage

Other Minds presents a showing of the not-quite-documentary The Revenge of the Dead Indians on Monday, June 15. It's a benefit for Other Minds and includes a reception.

Details:

THE REVENGE OF THE DEAD INDIANS:
In Memoriam John Cage
a composed film

Monday, June 15, 2009
6:00pm Reception
7:30pm Screening
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
1881 Post Street, San Francisco, California

This celebration of John Cage's work, influences, and thoughts is neither a feature film nor a documentary: footage of Cage and performances of his music are assembled together with 42 personalities, from well-known artists to market vendors and street cleaners, "found" video and audio landscapes, and theatrically directed readings. The result is an unexpected and fascinating combination of intellectual thought, viewpoints, and opinions.

This one-time film screening, a benefit for Other Minds, includes complimentary beverages and hors d'oeuvres and a chance to hear well-known figures such as Noam Chomsky, Merce Cunningham, Frank Gehry, Ellsworth Kelly, Yoko Ono, and Frank Zappa pay tribute to John Cage.

Seating is general admission. Tickets are available on a step-scale at $15, $25, and $50.

Directed by Henning Lohner
Music: John Cage
Cinematographer: Van Carlson
Length: 129 min

Trailer and Details: http://www.otherminds.org/shtml/Deadindians.shtml
Buy Tickets Now: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/67527

View the trailer right here:

Personal to DR

Hey - you know what you said in the program for the Verdi Requiem about overinterpreting Tristan in the 1998 run? I attended three of those performances, and I will tell you that two of them were excellent and one lingers as one of the greatest performances I've ever heard of anything, anywhere.

Auf wiedersehn, Donald

After 17 years as music director of the San Francisco Opera, Donald Runnicles is at the end of his contract and off to other important posts, as music director of the Deutsch Oper Berlin and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. For his farewell gala, he led a performance of the Verdi Requiem - an odd choice, or an interesting one, depending on your standpoint, because his clearest strengths have been in German and 20th/21st century opera, from Mozart to Wagner to Strauss to Janacek to Messiaen and Ligeti. Oh, and that most Wagnerian of Italians, Puccini. I've heard improvement over time in his Verdi, capped by the fine Simon Boccanegra last year, and it'll be interesting to hear what he does with the summer La Traviata production, but maybe not as interesting as what Nicola Luisotti would do with Traviata.

The company announced a starry group of soloists, Patricia Racette, Stephanie Blythe, Stefano Secco, and Andrea Silvestrelli, with Blythe and Secco, who will be singing in staged operas next season, both making their house debuts. Racette took ill and cancelled the day before the performance, replaced by Heidi Melton, the young dramatic soprano who has been dropping jaws left and right since appearing as Marianne in Rosenkavalier and the goddess Diana in Iphegenie en Tauride a couple of years back.

Given this particular mix of ingredients, the big surprise in last Friday's performance was just how badly it started out. The first third sounded under-rehearsed, badly balanced, and badly coordinated. The orchestra, making a rare on-stage appearance, overwhelmed the chorus, which was pushed to the rear of the stage and sounded both distant and timid.

The great hallmark of a Runnicles performance is typically its clarity and orchestral transparency; here, all was mud and murk. I was seated in Row T of the orchestra, and in one early passage the winds sounded as though they were floating 15 feet over my head while the chorus sang from somewhere out on Franklin Street. Throughout the first third, even when chorus, orchestra, and soloists were on the same beat, they sounded so out of harmony as to be in separate worlds. Even the first fierce "Dies irae" didn't quite jell.

Somewhere around the "Quid sum miser" or "Rex tremenda" Runnicles finally got everything under control, and the Requiem came together at last, with shape, confidence, and momentum. From that point, my program has numerous exclamation points and positive notes. The chorus sang with more gusto and audibility, reaching a peak a light and joyous account of the complicated fugue in the Sanctus. I still would have liked an addition 50 or more singers on stage, and - I'm guessing - more rehearsal time; there was no comparison with how the SF Symphony Chorus sounded in the same piece a couple of years back with James Conlon.

Each of the soloists had some great moments during the Requiem, though as a group they weren't perfectly matched. Stefano Secco has a good voice, thought sometimes too tight at the top; some fire in his temperament; a deep sense of the words; and the ability to maintain a good line, and yet - his voice is simply built on a smaller scale than those of the other soloists. He was never inaudible, but neither was he able to match or properly balance them. He was at his best in the "Ingemisco," singing operatically and gorgeously, and in the Lux Aeterna.

This performance marked bass Andrea Silvestrelli's third appearance at the War Memorial Opera House. His first was a decade ago, singing Oroveso in an ill-starred Norma whose vocal highlights were Gary Rideout as Flavio, handily outsinging the Pollione, and Anna Caterina Antonacci as a dramatic Adalgisa with a very short top. When I saw him cast as Fasolt in last year's Rheingold, I felt dread, but to my surprise, he made a superb and moving giant.

I now think that perhaps the German repertory suits him better than the Italian The start of the Requiem found him in the same hollow voice I remembered from Norma, but as he warmed up, he found the tonal core of his voice and produced some beautiful singing, especially in soft sections. Like Secco, he understands the style and sings with operatic fervor.

He doesn't always mind the conductor, though. At one point, Runnicles gave him a look and a gesture, and kept glacing at him every few seconds for the next half-minute or more. I would say "Bad bass!" but I agreed with him: it would have been a good point to push ahead a bit more.

Blythe and Melton, with their creamy, well-blended sounds, made an interesting contrast to the men. Both the men impressed me as very Italian, with some edge and vibrancy to their voices and a native-speaker's feeling for style. Blythe and Melton sound as though they'd be more at home in Strauss than in Verdi, and both have a more "international" - or maybe I mean American - sound than the men.

The two women made a well-matched team, nonetheless, whether in the treacherous section in octaves or singing in thirds elsewhere. Their voices are similarly expansive, their styles bold. Melton made a good run at getting the words out in the "Libera me" and floated exquisitely elesewhere.

In the end, while the evening came together satisfactorily for the last 2/3 - and while I understand the conductor's desire to showcase the chorus - I have to wonder if we might have had a better celebration with an all-German evening. Melton, Blythe (a superb Fricka in Seattle's Ring), and Silvestrelli, at least, would have been in their element.

I'm sorry to even be saying "Auf wiedersehn" to Donald Runnicles. I've admired his conducting deeply, and I'm with him in prefering the adventurous programming of the Rosenberg era to the preponderance of Italian staples and conservative commissions that I fear we're in for in the Gockley. (See Joshua Kosman's exist interview with Runnicles, in the Chron a couple of weeks ago.) I hope we'll have him as a regular guest conductor, for Britten, for Strauss, for Wagner, for Janacek, for, well, anything he'd like to do.

Bay Area Composers II: Pamela Z

Excerpts from Pamela Z's The Pendulum:


Pamela Z's web site; Pamela Z's YouTube channel.

Oakland Symphony Chorus Summer Sings

Tuesdays at 7 PM - July 7 through August 11, 2009. 

Join us this summer as OSC continues the longest-running Summer Sing-in series in the Bay Area - continuous since 1993!

July 7 - Haydn: Theresien Mass
Karla Lemon - Guest conductor throughout the Bay Area & soloist for many years

July 14 - Beethoven: 9th & Mozart: Coronation Mass
Michael Morgan - Music Director, Oakland East Bay Symphony & Festival Opera; Principal Conductor,Sacramento Philharmonic

July 21 - Verdi: Requiem
Lynne Morrow - Music Director of Oakland Symphony Chorus & Pacific Mozart Ensemble; Associate Professor, Sonoma State University

July 28 - Beethoven: Missa Solemnis
Buddy James - Associate Prof. of Music, Cal State East Bay, Director of Choral & Vocal Activities, conductor of the University Orchestra

August 4 - Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms & Schubert: Mass in G
Vance George - Former director of San Francisco Symphony Chorus

August 11 - Handel: Messiah
Magen Solomon - Conductor & Faculty, University of Southern California; Artistic Director, San Francisco Choral Artists

First Covenant Church
4000 Redwood Road
Oakland

$10 per evening, or $50 for a season pass.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up, NY State Version

Almost as much fun as Rod Blagojovich, but that problem was solved fairly easily. This has been going on for forty years or so. Note that I also live in a state suffering from terminal legislative paralysis, for different reasons from NY.

• G.O.P. Regains Control of New York State Senate
• Albany Drama is Tragedy and Farce
• Feeling Slighted, Rich Patron Led Albany Revolt
• Battle to Control State Senate Rages Unabated

There's plenty more at the Times, where those stories came from.

A Hearty Welcome...

...to Jonathan Vinocour, who has been appointed principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony. And deepest thanks to Yun Jie Liu, who has most ably held the position of acting principal violist since the 2005-06 season.

Compare and Contrast 16

• Missy Mazzoli, quoted in the Times: “So many composers would write for orchestra at the drop of a hat,” Ms. Mazzoli said. (She has a commission from the ISCM for the League of Composers' new orchestra.)
• Kyle Gann, writing at PostClassic: "I'm not one of the composers who's allowed to write for orchestra much, so I don't teach orchestration." He elaborates on what he means by that, but I gotta say, I hear real differences among "I'm not allowed," "I don't get the commissions others do," and "I'm not going to write for orchestra on spec because I think it'll never be performed." There's also the little matter of his claim that a composer needs to be on the orchestral commission track by grad school. It'd be interesting to track the last decade's worth of new-music commissions in US orchestras and see who is getting commissioned. Also up for discussion, at least in my book: were both Elliott Carter and John Adams on that track in grad school?

Drucker Retires

A few years back, I was surprised to discover that Stanley Drucker, a stalwart of the New York Philharmonic during my childhood, was still playing. I figured he'd been around for 30 or 40 years.

Was I ever wrong. After sixty (60!) years with the New York Philharmonic, 49 of them as principal clarinetist, Stanley Drucker is retiring at the close of this season. He's played 10,200 concerts (!!!) under 10 music directors and countless guest conductors.

These are all astonishing numbers. Has any other orchestral musician come close to them? Read all about Stanley Drucker in Daniel Wakin's NY Times article today.

Bay Area Composers I: Michael Kaulkin

Michael Kaulkin's "American Standard," for clarinet and piano, performed by clarinetist Marianne Gythfeldt and pianist Julie Nishimura at the University of Delaware on May 10, 2009.

Michael Kaulkin's web site. Check out, especially, the excerpts from his recent string quartet "City Walks."

Flatpack Opera?

Yes, it's an opera performed in an Ikea store! If you're in Wembly, London, it's not too late to attend. It's free; dates are June 2, 3, 9, and 10 at 7:30 p.m.

Schedule Conflict?

Via Terry Teachout and the Santa Fe Opera web site comes word that Ning Liang will not be appearing in The Letter, an opera with music by Paul Moravec and libretto by Terry Teachout, because of "a scheduling conflict."

Color me doubtful. The production dates and cast were announced in the spring of 2008, and planned well before that. You can see Ning Liang's planned opera performance schedule in OperaBase. She has a good chunk of time alloted for The Letter.

Late withdrawals happen for a number of reasons:

• Illness, such as the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's withdrawal from Doctor Atomic
• Change in the role's requirements, per this press release about how Richard Paul Fink replaced Friedemann Roehlig in Doctor Atomic (Reading that press release now, one wonders about it.)
• Unprepared artist. A tenor turned up in San Francisco a few years ago for Don Carlo without having learned the part in French. Hello? Didn't you and your agent read the contract?
• Artistic differences/singer doesn't get along with director/singer hates role requirements/director doesn't like singer.

A scheduling conflict is hard to swallow. Opera contracts are negotiated years in advance, and while I've heard of singers withdrawing from one production because of a great opportunity elsewhere, what's going on that is more important than the premiere of a new opera?