Not since Ponselle?

The wonderful Karita Mattila isn't singing tomorrow's Met matinee - and thus broadcast - of Fidelio; instead, her cover, Erika Sunnegardh is singing. She is 40 and making her Met debut (!); she's also under contract to cover Mattila's Elsa, and she's taking part of a run of Turandot a season or so down the road. I'm rather astonished to find this in the Times article about tomorrow; the quotation is from Joe Volpe's not-yet-published memoir:

"Not since Rosa Ponselle's debut in 1918, opposite Caruso in 'La Forza del Destino,' has the Met given an unknown singer such an opportunity," Mr. Volpe wrote.

I guess that's about her upcoming starring role and the covers, but I wonder how that plays in the context of Astrid Varnay's 1941 debut, covering Sieglinde for an indisposed Lotte Lehmann, followed by singing Bruennhilde the following week covering for Helen Traubel.

In the East

I'm unexpectedly home on family business, completely with laptop so that I can get some work done while I'm here. So I will be blogging, I expect, and will also be attending some performances in NYC, I hope.

Peter Craven Rants

An entertaining rant by Peter Craven, in The Age, about the recent, awful film Tristan and Isolde, complete with a fine discussion of Wagner's opera.

The Fredosphere in San Francisco

Fred Himebaugh's choral piece The Evidence will be performed in the San Francisco Bay Area by San Francisco Choral Artists in concerts on March 25 (St. Mark's Episcopal, Palo Alto), April 1 (St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco), and April 2 (St. Paul's Episcopal, Oakland). SFCA is a superb group! Congratulations to Fred - and I'm hoping to be at one of those concerts.

Link Roundup

I have a couple of interesting links in my mail box, but no postings to hang on them, so:

• Bridge Records sends me mail about once a month with new releases. Music for cello and piano by Chopin and Liszt, anyone? Tone poems by 19th and early 20th century American composers? Check out their Web site and get on their mailing list.


• Duo 46 is a violin & guitar duet (Beth Schneider and Matt Gould, respectively). They've commissioned many interesting works and are charismatic performers of an unusual repertory. Listen to the many samples of their work.

How It Went

The inaugural concerts of the Haydn Singers this weekend went well. Palo Alto was a little more ragged than we would have liked, and the turnout was fairly small, at least in part owing to the ghastly weather. Apparently thunderstorms tend to suppress the audience, and who can blame them? I might have stayed home myself. But my friend David Bratman, who reviews for San Francisco Classical Voice, came, and wrote us up on his LiveJournal.

The Berkeley concert went splendidly, and we had an excellent turnout, especially considering that we were performing opposite Hesperion XXI and the San Francisco Bach Choir.

We will very likely be performing this same program in the fall, in venues to be announced later, with other programs to follow. Catch us then!

Haydn Singers This Weekend

I'm thrilled to report that the Haydn Singers, conducted by Paul Flight, are debuting this weekend, in Palo Alto and Berkeley, CA. Our first program includes:

• The obligatory Mozart: Misericordias Domini, K. 222, and Missa Brevis, K. 192, both very dramatic indeed


• The eponymous Haydn: some delightful part songs and a Salve Regina by Franz Josef, plus Christus Factus Est by FJ's brother Johann Michael


• The unknown Gasparini: a remarkable setting of Adoramus Te

Tickets are inexpensive ($15 general admission, $12 seniors, $10 students, all at the door), the music is delightful, the venues excellent:

• Friday, March 10, 8 p.m. First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto
  1140 Cowper Street Palo Alto, CA


• Saturday, March 11, 8 p.m.
  Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Berkeley
  2005 Berryman Street (between Milvia and Henry), Berkeley

(Moved to the top of the heap on Friday, March 10; first published several days ago.)

Dojo space sought

A posting from my non-musical life.

I'm just starting to look around for space for my jujitsu dojo, which I plan to open....well, let's say June or July, maybe as late as September.

You might know a space that would work for me! Here's what I'm looking for; some of the requirements are more flexible than others, and might change if I can't find what I want where I want it, but for now, these lists are it.


Required:

Shared space of some kind (I cannot rent a storefront on my own)
In Berkeley, CA or Oakland, CA (Not Laurel District)
On BART or a major bus line
750 s.f. open space minimum (no columns dividing the space); the
bigger, the better up to 1200 s.f.
At least 17 feet wide
8-10 foot ceilings (The higher end of the range is better)
Space has mats already or has storage space for mats
Storage space for other stuff (I am willing to buy Ikea-type storage
closets, etc.)
Available 2 or 3 evenings a week in 3-hour blocks (class will be 2
hours but I need setup & takedown time)
Changing rooms
Bathroom


Would be nice:

Available for a couple of weekend classes a month
Within walking distance of a BART stop, with walking distance defined as 10 blocks/15 minutes
Wooden or raised or sprung floor
Mirrors
Ability to hang bags
Room for me to have a desk
Wheelchair accessible


This space can be in a dance or movement studio of some kind; it can
be shared with another martial art; it can be in warehouse space; it
can be in a Y or recreation center or church or synagogue or other
house of worship (as long as I don't have to convert :-).

If you point me to a space I ultimately take, you get six months of
free jujitsu classes, which you may transfer to another person if you
don't want classes. (I'm planning to teach anyone 14 and up; no
children's classes, some flexibility on 14 depending on the individual
child.)

The Numbers

Greg Sandow posted some fascinating numbers on his ArtsJournal blog last week, covering the number of concerts and number of attendees annually at some 1200 American orchestras between 1990 and 2004. His posting focusses on the attendence patterns, but to me that's not the most interesting aspect of the numbers.

What caught my eye is the enormous increase in the number of concerts in that time period: from 25,210 to 37,263. Folks, that's a 50% increase in the number of concerts! There's an amazing story buried in that! Who is giving those additional concerts? Where are they? Does this mean that somewhere, new orchestras are attracting new audiences? That existing orchestras are overextended? That too many organizations are chasing the same butts to get them in the seats? In what segment are those additional concerts? (Greg raises that question.) What on earth do those numbers mean?

Venues

I really ought to have pushed this past weekend's Soli Deo Gloria concerts a little harder. It's not my favorite repertory, but yesterday's concert, especially, went quite well.

And the chorus sounded great. I arrived at the venue, Zion Lutheran in Piedmont on the late side; the rest of the chorus was already running through some openings - wow. A beautiful sound, well-blended and balanced, and way more sound than you'd expect from 35 singers. (I must say that Soli Deo Gloria has many excellent voices in it it!)

Our other two venues were First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto and St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

If you've never been to St. Gregory's, you really do need to go. The building itself is beautiful, delightful, and unusual: the sanctuary is two very high-ceilinged connected rooms that are round, rather than square; it seems either can be configured with an altar; the iconography of the dancing saints is nothing like you'll see anywhere else. It's a fabulous venue for listening to music or for singing; the sanctuary is lively without being overwhelmingly resonant, and it's easy to hear yourself and the whole chorus. Sight-lines are also very good. The seats are comfortable as well.

First Lutheran is small, traditionally-configured and very fine to sing in as well, though I think you wouldn't want a really big chorus in there, or a group with an orchestra - that would overwhelm the space.

What I'm thinking about most is Zion Lutheran and how different it sounded to me a week ago and yesterday. My initial impression at our rehearsal last Monday was "dead space, unresonant, too muffled because of the carpeting and padded pews." I couldn't hear myself so well, and the chorus sounded to me like a bunch of disconnected voices. But we sounded great yesterday. I have to assume that was mostly a result of how I was feeling a week ago, with the balance being the extra week of rehearsal and two performances we had under our collective belts.

Poetry on Assignment

I wrote poetry intermittently at various times when I was younger - a lot younger - but only a few poems since I got out of school.

It turns out that what I might need is to be assigned a subject. I've written three poems recently, all response to assignments, more or less, from outside sources. One came from a Salon article. The other two....

My friend Elise makes fantastic and very individual jewelry - she has an incredible eye for combining different stones and beads, and has developed a wire-bending technique different from anything I've ever seen before. She is also a person of, well, whimsy: she names all of her pieces, from fairly simple earrings to extremely complex and beautiful necklaces. She also likes to issue literary challenges and give earrings and other jewelry in exchange for writing.

I saw her at the Potlatch science fiction convention over the weekend, and rose to the challenge. For a hair ornament, she asked for a work about pirates. I wrote a poem and took home an ornament (the poem is a little too personal to post). A bunch of these were available; a couple of other friends also have hair ornaments. A 7-year-old of my acquaintance got a hair ornament in exchange for a drawing.

For a pair of earrings called "The Truth Berry," Elise put on a contest: write a haiku about the earrings. No digital camera (yet), so I can't show you the earrings. They combine a purple, faceted glass bead with a heart-shaped green bead, so they look like a leaf and a berry.

I won the contest with this:

Taste it now. Is it
sweet or bitter? Will you live
or die? Tell the truth.

I told Elise, and was only half-joking, that maybe she should send me poetry assignments all the time.

New in the Times

A couple of features in the Sunday Times Arts & Leisure section are by apparent newcomers, unless I've missed their bylines:

Evan Eisenberg's Arms and the Mass, or: Why Does This Liturgy Sound So Familiar? is about masses based on the song L'Homme armé; the story has too many jokes and too little solid info - he's trying too hard and misses the point. There are audio clips labeled as if they're from the Dufay and Josquin L'Homme armé masses, but actually they're both the tune itself, not excerpts from polyphonic masses. Aaargh.

Meline Toumani, in Get Them in the Seats, and Their Hearts Will Follow, discusses an initiative at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln for getting youth in the door. What's different about this? Teenagers themselves are in charge.

Losing the Thread

Jon Carroll, a great columnist who really, really should be syndicated, writes about his granddaughter, horses, and classical music in today's S. F. Chronicle. (Read him every day! Really!)

Ticket Prices - too high, or what?

Maybe not - I covered a few bases in an article in SFCV, called The High Price of Music. A friend has called to my attention a couple of Bay Area organizations offering high-quality, low-priced concerts:

• Noe Valley Chamber Music, $15 general admission, $12 senior, $12 student. Upcoming concerts include Nadya Tichman and a Season Finale ($25) featuring a performance by Donald Runnicles (piano, Music Director of SF Opera), Kay Stern (violin, concertmaster of the Opera orchestra), and Thalia Moore (cello, associate principal cello of the Opera orchestra)


• San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, FREE

Special thanks to Drew McManus for a lot of help dealing with those pesky 990s while I wrapped up the SFCV article.

The Fear

Daniel J. Wakin's Times article on Peter Gelb and the Met is being received with considerable approval, by Alex Ross and, somewhat to my surprise, ACD.

I like most it, and agree with Alex's comments about repertory. This is especially encouraging:

But he went on to say that the house had been "coasting" and that the old formula — counting on dedicated operagoers to fill the house for standard productions — no longer worked. He also took note of criticism that the Met has not attracted enough world-class conductors. Regarding singers, he said, it has "waited too long to jump on talent."

This concerns me, though:

Performances will be broadcast nationwide in high-definition movie theaters and made available through downloading, if agreements can be reached with the house's unions. CD's and DVD's could follow.

Opera is naturally scaled for live theater, in which the audience isn't right on top of the performers. If live opera is streamed to movie theaters, where the expectation is of intimacy and many close-ups, will singers scale their performances to the camera and microphone? That's not what I want to hear or see, and I would worry a lot about the long-term effects on the art.

Repertory

The San Francisco Symphony is touring China. There's an an attractive Web site set up for the event; you can see photos and what they call "journal entries". (Hint: it's a blog.)

What's most catching my eye, though, is their read-it-and-weep repertory: Brahms, Schumann, Tchaikowsky, Mahler, Dvorak, Stravinsky, Haydn, Debussy-Schoenberg, and, oh, yes, representing the United States, Ives and Copland.

I understand that the idea is to showcase an outstanding orchestra and its conductor, but still: Nothing by living composers. Nothing adventurous at all. And, alas, it's typical of the SFS's programming of the last couple of years.

How Very Odd

Like Alex and M. C-, I am an oboe.

Breaking Up, Part 3

Michael Renardy reports in comments to a previous posting that the Audubon Quartet has reached a settlement of sorts. An anonymous donor came up with $200,000, which former Audubon first violinist David Ehrlich is willing to accept in settlement. Clyde Shaw and Doris Lederer will be keeping their cello and viola, respectively; Akemi Takayama, second violinist, is still in neogtiations with Ehrlich.

See Google News for more stories.

Update, 2/8/06: Daniel Wakin has an update in the Times. Read it before February 15, 2006 when it goes into the paid archive.

Upcoming Concerts (with two, two, two choruses!)

Soli Deo Gloria, with which I've been singing since September, is performing the first weekend of March. Our guest conductor this time around is Chad Runyon - I expect some Bay Area readers know him as a baritone soloist, voice teacher, and past member of Chanticleer. He's programmed a concert of Palestrina (Missa Brevis), Victoria (Missa quarti toni), Morales, and Guerrero. The concert is coming together very nicely. You can see us in three places:

• Friday, March 3, 2006, 7:30 p.m.: First Lutheran, Palo Alto


• Saturday, March 4, 2006, 5:00 p.m.: St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco


• Sunday, March 5, 2006, 3:30 p.m., Zion Lutheran, Piedmont

If I were picking a venue other than by convenience, I'd take St. Gregory's. It's a lovely church to look at, to sing in, and to hear music in.

Haydn Singers Make Their Debut!

I'm extremely excited to be singing in The Haydn Singers, Paul Flight's new chorus. Paul is a wizard of a conductor and it's a great group. We are singing some charming Haydn part-songs, his Salve Regina, a Gasparini motet, a motet by Michael Haydn, and (despite the name), Mozart's Misericordias Domini (K222) and Missa Brevis in F (K192). The music is all fantastic, both fun and challenging to sing. We'll be performing the second weekend in March (yes, I have too many rehearsals and performances between Feb. 27 and March 11! ):

• Friday, March 10, 8 p.m., First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto (1140 Cowper Street)


• Saturday, March 11, 8 p.m., Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Berkeley (2005 Berryman Street (at Milvia))

Come hear us sing!

Long may he blog!

Happy 50th birthday to Terry Teachout! I have a few of those things in common to you - first Presidential election in which I voted, seeing Star Wars when it was new (I met an important person in my life while standing in line to see The Empire Strikes Back the day it opened in Boston!), and what I learned to type on. Well, it was a typewriter, anyway.

(But my inner copy editor is wondering how "The fourth decade of my life, after all, wasn’t exactly an unbroken string of disasters", apparently referring to Terry's 40s, got past his inner copy editor. Alas, our 40s are the fifth decade of our lives.)

Ooops

Well, I never did get comments written on Berkeley Opera's Falstaff, and now it's over. I hope that no one missed the production on account of my indolence; it was very good in all respects. The orchestra played the best I've heard from Berkeley Opera; the singing was good and sometimes excellent (I loved Ann Moss's Nanetta in particular), the direction lively (though there could could have been a little less slapstick), the sets bare bones but effective.

Meanwhile, speaking prospectively, I saw Nanny McPhee yesterday, and suggest you do the same, especially if you like Emma Thompson and/or wicked children doing wicked things. The production design is especially neat - probably based on the Nurse Matilda books, which I haven't read, but would like to. You'll never see a Victorian home with that color scheme, I feel sure. Excellent performances from all involved, with an extremely hilarious Angela Lansbury (and if you're wondering where you last saw the boy who plays Simon, he was Liam Neeson's son in Love, Actually).

Saturday evening I saw Luma at the 16th Street Victorian Theater. It is very entertaining, though I'm not sure I'd describe it as "spectacular," which is how the Luma Web site describes the show. If you've seen Cirque du Soleil you have seen more spectacular theater; if you've seen The Flying Karamazov Brothers, you've seen much more spectaular juggling. I like the concept: a dark stage with lots of tricks done entirely through lighting effects. The execution is variable, and while you can't actually see how the tricks are done, they're not hard to figure out, so there's not so much mystery. The show's a bit long for the material, and the volume level of the soundtrack needs to be turned down (it's a very good score, however). Luma is fine if you're looking for something light, fun, and entertaining, but don't expect depth or revelations.

Back soon, really

There's a system release going out on Tuesday - honestly, this has been an easy release cycle, the first in several years in which I haven't worked a weekend or two or stayed at work until 10 p.m. a few times. Still, I've mostly been thinking about shared library environment variables and full-text indexing in the last couple of weeks.

On the musical side, I picked up sale tickets to a few SFS concerts. Maybe LHL will show up for her scheduled appearance. The Mahler 8th is sold out (gnash, gnash).

And tonight, I'm seeing the Berkeley Opera's Falstaff. Jo Vincent Parks is singing the fat knight; I've liked him in everything I've seen him in, and I have high hopes. Review of sorts tomorrow, I'm sure.

I started a posting about Nilsson the week her death was announced, and I plan to wrap that one up soon, especially if I can get the DG Tristan recording back from friends who think they might want to see it in SF this coming fall.

San Francisco Opera, 2006-7

Janos Gereben, the fastest pen in the West, sent along the schedule, about which I must first say:

SEATTLE TRISTAN!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder how many of the performances I can get to.

Janos's full report is now up at SFCV. You may want to look at the new and more readable San Francisco Opera Web site as well. If you have sfopera.org bookmarked, that is not working, apparently. Use sfopera.com

It's a fairly juicy season. Okay, I could live without Carmen, Barber of Seville, and Don Giovanni. Christine Goerke is wasted in Fledermaus (which I can also live without), but Iphegenie en Tauride, Karita in Manon Lescaut - and that Tristan production - make up for a lot. Woo hoo!

Here's the whole thing:

San Francisco Opera 2006-'07 season

[*] San Francisco Opera Debut
[**] American Opera Debut

UN BALLO IN MASCHERA by Giuseppe Verdi
Florida Grand Opera production
September 8 (7 pm), 13 (7:30 pm), 17 (2 pm), 20 (7:30 pm), 23 (8 pm), 26
(7:30 pm), 29 (8 pm), 2006
Marco Armiliato/Gina Lapinski/Zack Brown
Amelia - Deborah Voigt
King Gustav III - Marcus Haddock*
Ankerström - Ambrogio Maestri*
Ulrica - Tichina Vaughn*
Oscar - Anna Christy

DIE FLEDERMAUS by Johann Strauss, Jr.
San Francisco Opera production
September 9 (7:30 pm), 12 (8 pm), 14 (7:30 pm), 16 (8 pm), October 4 (7:30
pm), 8 (2 pm), 13 (8 pm), 2006
Donald Runnicles/Lotfi Mansouri/Loren Meeker*/Wolfram Skalicki
Eisenstein - Wolfgang Brendel
Adele - Jennifer Welch-Babidge
Rosalinde - Christine Goerke*
Prince Orlofsky - Gerald Thompson

RIGOLETTO by Giuseppe Verdi
San Francisco Opera production
September 30 (8 pm); October 3 (8 pm), 6 (8 pm), 9 (7:30 pm), 12 (7:30 pm),
15 (2 pm), 21 (8 pm)†, (7:30 pm)†, 29 (2 pm)†, 2006
Stephen Lord* - Valery Alexejev†*/Harry Silverstein/Michael Yeargan
Rigoletto - Paolo Gavanelli
Gilda - Mary Dunleavy
The Duke - Giuseppe Gipali*
Count Monterone - Greer Grimsley

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE by Richard Wagner
Seattle Opera production
October 5 (7 pm), 10 (7 pm), 14 (7 pm), 18 (7 pm), 22 (1 pm), 27 (7 pm),
2006
Donald Runnicles/Francesca Zambello/Herbert Kellner*/Alison Chitty
Tristan - Thomas Moser
Isolde - Christine Brewer
King Marke - Kristinn Sigmundsson
Kurwenal - Boaz Daniel*
Brangäne - Jane Irwin**

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE by Gioacchino Rossini
San Francisco Opera production
October 31 (8 pm); November 2 (7:30 pm), 4 (8 pm), 7 (7:30 pm), 9 (7:30 pm),
12 (2 pm), 17 (8 pm), 26 (2 pm), 30 (7:30 pm), 2006
Maurizio Barbacini/Johannes Schaaf/Hans Dieter Schaal
Figaro - Nathan Gunn
Rosina - Allyson McHardy
Count Almaviva - John Osborn*
Doctor Bartolo - Bruno de Simone*
Don Basilio - Phillip Ens
Berta - Catherine Cook
Ambrogio - Ricardo Herrera

MANON LESCAUT by Giacomo Puccini
Lyric Opera of Chicago production
November 19 (2 pm), 22 (7:30 pm), 25 (8 pm), 28 (8 pm); December 1 (8 pm), 7
(7:30 pm), 10 (2 pm), 2006
Donald Runnicles/Olivier Tambosi*/Frank Phillip Schloessmann*
Manon Lescaut - Karita Mattila
Chevalier des Grieux - Misha Didyk
Lescaut - John Hancock
Geronte - Eric Halfvarson

CARMEN by Georges Bizet
San Francisco Opera production
November 21 (7:30 pm), 24 (7:30 pm), 25 (12 pm)†, 29 (7:30 pm); December 2
(7:30 pm)†, 3 (2:00 pm), 6 (7:30 pm), 8 (7:30 pm)†, 9 (7:30 pm), 2006
Sebastian Lang-Lessing/Jean-Pierre Ponnelle/Laurie Feldman
Carmen - Marina Domashenko / Hadar Halévy*†
Don José - Marco Berti* / Stuart Skelton†
Escamillo - Erwin Schrott* / TBA†
Micaëla - Ana María Martínez / TBA†
Zuniga - Ricardo Herrera

DON GIOVANNI by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
San Francisco Opera and Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie co-production
June 2 (8 pm), 5 (8 pm), 10 (2 pm), 13 (7:30 pm), 16 (8 pm), 22 (8 pm), 28
(7:30 pm), 30 (8 pm), 2007
Donald Runnicles/Leah Hausman*/John Macfarlane
Don Giovanni - Mariusz Kwiecien
Donna Anna - Hope Briggs
Donna Elvira - Twyla Robinson
Don Ottavio - Charles Castronovo
Leporello - Oren Gradus
Zerlina - Claudia Mahnke
Masetto - Luca Pisaroni*
Commendatore - Kristinn Sigmundsson

DER ROSENKAVALIER by Richard Strauss
San Francisco Opera production
June 9 (7:30 pm), 15 (7:30 pm), 19 (7:30 pm), 21 (7:30 pm)†, 24 (1:30 pm),
27 (7:30 pm); July 1 (1:30 pm)†, 2007
Donald Runnicles/Sandra Bernhard/Lotfi Mansouri/Thierry Bosquet
Octavian - Joyce DiDonato
Marschallin - Soile Isokoski* / Martina Serafin*†
Sophie - Miah Persson*
Baron Ochs - Kristinn Sigmundsson
Faninal - Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Annina - Catherine Cook
Valzacchi - David Cangelosi

IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE by Christoph Willibald Gluck
San Francisco Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago co-production
June 14 (7:30 pm), 17 (2 pm), 20 (7:30 pm), 23 (8 pm), 26 (8 pm), 29 (8 pm),
2007
Patrick Summers/Robert Carsen*/Tobias Hoheisel*
Iphigénie - Susan Graham
Orestes - Bo Skovhus
Pylades - Paul Groves

Updated Thursday, January 12.

Distorted Tunes Test

The distorted tunes test at the Web site of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders is fun! Patty at Oboeinsight is undoubtedly right that it's too easy in some way for musicians - to feel challenged or really tested, I expect we'd need something subtler, like a passage from a Mahler symphony or Strauss tone poem with a subtle change in harmony or orchestration. Anyone out there feel like concocting something tougher?

Still, the NIDCD test is interested to take - my skin crawled at some of the distortions - and it is very likely useful to checking musical memories and accuracy.

Doors Opening 2

In October, when I posted that I had started singing in Soli Deo Gloria, I was already sitting on some other pretty big news:

I am opening my own jujitsu dojo later this year.

This has been a long time coming and is something I've wanted to do essentially since I started practicing. I am a second-degree black belt in Dan Zan Ryu jujitsu (AJJF). I have practiced since 1982, first at The Dojo, then, when The Dojo closed, at Laurel Jujitsu, of which I was a founding member and where I've been an instructor since 1991.

I'm on a break of sorts from jujitsu, as I need to do some significant strengthening work (again) on my cranky back. I'll be practicing as I'm able with my senseis, Nancy and Matt Bigham, who teach at Kodai no Bushido in Santa Clara.

No name or location for the new dojo yet, but I plan to be teaching somewhere between El Cerrito and San Leandro, most likely in Oakland or Berkeley, and I hope to open the school some time between June and August. The curriculum will be pretty standard for an AJJF school:

• Dan Zan Ryu jujitsu for women and men (a big change after 23 years in a women's dojo!)


• Women's self-defense


• Rolling & falling. This is a class for people who don't want to spend years studying a martial art, but who do want to learn this very important self-protection skill.

No, I'm not quitting my day job. Very few people in this style or in the Bay Area are able to make a living teaching a martial art. I'll be happy to break even.

Watch this space for more news, including information on when & where, the grand opening demo (when my students know enough to give demonstrations, and very likely including guest martial artists and as many of my teachers and fellow jujitsuka as can be crammed into one room, and the schedule. You'll all invited to come take a class - first one's free. :-)