Rat­ing: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers pre­sented their final con­cert of the 2009/2010 sea­son tonight, 26 Apr 2010, at the Herbst The­ater in down­town San Fran­cisco. On the pro­gram were pieces by Greek com­poser Mano­lis Manousakis, Amer­i­can Tan Dun, Chi­nese Guo Wen­jing, and French­man Philippe Hurel. This pro­gram was pre­sented coher­ently and engag­ingly, because proper atten­tion was paid not only to select­ing and prepar­ing the music, but also to light­ing, stag­ing, and tech­no­log­i­cal aspects—a rare achieve­ment. Con­tinue read­ing “Con­cert Review: <span class=“caps”>SFCMP</span>’s His Own Space of Freedom—Theatrically Engag­ing and Musi­cally Diverse” »

Recently, I inter­viewed conductor/composer Chris­t­ian Bal­dini for the San Fran­cisco Con­tem­po­rary Music Play­ers. Chris­t­ian is con­duct­ing a piece by French com­poser, Philippe Hurel for SFCMP’s upcom­ing con­cert on April 26. Bal­dini is an Argen­tine musi­cian by birth, cur­rently teach­ing con­duct­ing at UC Davis near San Francisco.

Inter­est­ingly enough, in the process of the inter­view, we dis­cov­ered we have some things in com­mon, includ­ing a love of con­tem­po­rary music and new opera!