West Edge Opera Festival Schedule Change

Oakland Scottish Rite Center

July, 2022

West Edge Opera has announced that they're delaying their production of Charpentier's David and Jonathan to 2025, swapping in Luna Pearl Woolf and Royce Vavrek's Jacqueline in 2024. The latter will star soprano Marnie Breckenridge and cellist Matt Haimovitz. From the press release:

Jacqueline dives into the real-life struggle between celebrity virtuosic cellist Jacqueline du Pré and the multiple sclerosis that ravaged her body, mind, and talent, robbing her of her identity, her breathtaking musical gift, and her life. This intimate piece for soprano and cello brings two contemporary virtuosi to the stage: celebrated soprano Marnie Breckenridge as Jacqueline, and renowned cellist (and former du Pré protégé) Matt Haimovitz as du Pré’s only constant companion, her cello.
 
Inspired by the structure and emotional landscape of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Pulitzer Prize winning librettist Royce Vavrek chart the development of great prodigy and ultimately, great tragedy. Jacqueline references Haimovitz’s personal recollections of du Pré herself, from when he was a young prodigy under her wing. Colorful and at times fractured, the form of the work echoes du Pré’s iconic interpretation of the Elgar, using the concerto’s four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.

I've liked everything of Woolf's that I have heard, so I expect that this will be good. 

Also in the press release is the cast for Legend of the Ring, which looks very good:

Tracy Cox (Brunnhilde), Philip Skinner (Wotan), Alex Boyer (Sigmund/Siegfried), Mary Evelyn Hangley (Freia/Sieglinde), Stephanie Sanchez (Fricka), Kyle Bielfield (Loge/Mime), Peter Morgan (Alberich/Fasolt), Matt Lovell (Fafner/Hundig). Conducted by Jonathan Khuner, Directed by Sam Helfrich.

 

Museum Mondays

 

Mystic Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli

Angel and human onlookers

Palace of the Legion of Honor

December, 2023

Friday Photo

City Hall, San Francisco

January, 2024

 

Publication Catch-Up

I've published some reviews and articles without writing them up here. In reverse chronological order

• Sarah Cahill at Old First Church, a first-class recital of new and unfamiliar older music, including my first hearing of any of Ann Southam's gorgeous piano music.
• SF Symphony Cutbacks: Incidental or Significant? News article on SoundBox and SFS's finances, written with Janos Gereben.
• Dido's Ghost, at Philharmonia Baroque. My first exposure to the music of Errolynn Wallen; an uneasy extension of Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, well performed but it didn't exactly work for me.
• The Emissary, Opera Parallèle. A short, sweet opera based on Yoko Tawada's short, rather less sweet, novel of a dystopian future.
• The JACK Quartet plays music of John Luther Adams. An extraordinary performance of amazing music.

 

Museum Mondays

Sandro Botticelli

Detail of Mystid Nativity, with demon

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

Botticelli Drawings

Painting lent by National Gallery, London

December, 2023

 

Reduction in SoundBox

The last SoundBox concert I attended.

February, 2023

Photo by me.

Well, this is unfortunate:

SF Symphony cancels March 8 & 9 SoundBox program

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—The San Francisco Symphony’s March 8–9 SoundBox concerts, which were to be curated by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, have been canceled and will not be rescheduled. With Salonen's support, the Symphony decided to cancel this program as a means of offsetting the significant expenses associated with producing SoundBox. Going forward, the SoundBox series will include two programs each season.    The final 2023–24 SoundBox series program features SF Symphony Collaborative Partner and roboticist Carol Reiley (April 5–6) and will proceed as scheduled. “Press Play: Carol Reiley and the Robots” will be a first-of-its-kind, human-machine interactive program showcasing various uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI).    Ticketholders for the March 8–9 SoundBox program will be contacted with the option to exchange their tickets for a different concert, donate their tickets, or receive a refund for their purchase. All requests for ticket donations, gift certificates, exchanges, and refunds for these concerts must be received by July 1, 2024. For additional assistance with tickets, patrons can contact the Box Office by phone at 415.864.6000, email at patronservices@sfsymphony.org, or in person at the Davies Symphony Hall Box Office, on Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street in San Francisco.

I've got some questions out to SFS. Joshua Kosman has a report in the Chron with some quotations from Matthew Spivey, the orchestra's CEO. My questions go into the incredible amount of money the orchestra made in a recent fiscal year (based on its most recently-filed form 990) and what that money is going to be used for.
 

Friday Photo

Cans of Red and White Menudo

Farmer Joe's Market, Oakland, CA

December, 2023

 

LA Phil Das Rheingold

 

Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has performances of Wagner's Das Rheingold later this month, and gosh, the cast looks great. (Which of these singers will be in the next San Francisco Opera Ring bring-up? Place your bets now.)  There was a point when I would have said "this is in advance of a Paris Opera Ring, but we can't know whether any future Paris Ring productions will be conducted by Dudamel, who is no longer the music director there.)

I can't get there, but presumably others can. Scenic design by Frank Gehry should be interesting!

DUDAMEL LEADS DAS RHEINGOLD Thursday, January 18, at 8:00 PM Saturday, January 20, at 8:00 PM Sunday, January 21, at 2:00 PM Los Angeles Philharmonic Gustavo Dudamel, conductor

Alberto Arvelo, director Rodrigo Prieto, lighting designer Ryan Speedo Green, Wotan Barry Banks, Mime Peixin Chen, Fafner Alexandria Shiner,Wellgunde John Matthew Myers,Froh

Frank Gehry, scenic design Cori Ellison, dramaturg Raehann Bryce-Davis,Fricka Jochen Schmeckenbecher,Alberich Jessica Faselt, Freia Taylor Raven, Flosshilde Kyle Albertson, Donner

Cindy Figueroa, costumedesigner Simon O’Neill, Loge Morris Robinson, Fasolt Ann Toomey, Woglinde Tamara Mumford, Erda

Museum Mondays

Sandro Botticelli

Detail of Mystid Nativity, with demon

Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco

Botticelli Drawings

Painting lent by National Gallery, London

December, 2023

 

A Suggestion to Non-Profit Organizations

I just unsubscribed from the mailing list of an organization that I've been donating to for several years, and earlier this fall, I exchanged email with a representative of an organization I've been donating to for decades. In both cases, it was because of the volume of email I'd received in a short period asking for a donation (in both cases, an additional donation).

In the first case, I'd received nine emails in December. That was after donating in July and having my employer match the amount of the donation. In the second, I had donated at or above my recent level and I'd gotten a partial match from my employer, but I'd received six different physical and email requests for an additional donation during November and early December.

I don't know who develops strategies for soliciting donors or what data they have backing up their strategies. I do know that no organization wants to irritate their regular donors. 

I'm also aware that I might be more irritable that most donors. I got so annoyed with an organization I've donated to since the late 1990s that I had them remove me from all email and physical mailings many years ago. It hasn't kept me from donating, because they serve a fundamental social need that's important to me to support. (Feeding the hungry - it's an obscenity that anyone goes hungry in our incredibly wealthy country.)

So here's the strategy that I would suggest nonprofits consider:

• If a donor has donated once during the year, solicit them once and only once toward the end of the year for an additional. Make sure to thank them for the first donation.
• If a donor has donated twice, again, solicit at most once more. And thank them for both of those donations.
• If you're sending email to someone who has never donated, maybe think about why and whether sending multiple solicitations is going to work. Do you survey nondonors to see what they are thinking?

Maybe the repeated solicitations get more money from some donors; maybe they shake loose the first donation from others. I have no data, and presumably the organizations following these patterns do. I'm not a donor at the level of tens or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars; I'm sure that those donors get kid-glove treatment from the organizations they donate to, and absolutely never feel harassed. I don't want that kind of treatment (even if I were able to donate at that level....), but I definitely do not want to feel bombarded by the organizations I donate to. And I don't think that is too much to ask.