Like vir­tu­ally all San Fran­cisco Sym­phony con­certs, I attended because there was a new work being played, in this case Israeli-American com­poser Avner Dor­man’s Uriah: The Man The King Wanted Dead. A pro­gram­matic work based on a grue­some Old Tes­ta­ment story, Uriah com­ple­mented the other pro­gram­matic work of the evening, Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice, made famous by the Dis­ney animation—but which I had never heard per­formed live, maybe also because of Disney.

Despite my inher­ent dis­like of late Roman­tic music, hands down the Dukas was a bet­ter piece than the Dor­man. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: Pro­gram­matic works at <span class=“caps”>SF</span> Sym­phony: Avner Dor­man (2010) vs. Paul Dukas (1897)” »

Rat­ing: 4 out of 5 stars

SFCMP kicked off its 40th sea­son with a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally eclec­tic pro­gram that reminded me why the con­cert pro­ducer has been able to draw loyal sub­scribers for decades. The pieces on the pro­gram showed an appre­ci­a­tion for the phe­nom­e­non of the con­cert as a social event belong­ing to a spe­cific com­mu­nity, and the con­cert reflected the eclec­tic spirit of Amer­i­can new music. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: <span class=“caps”>SFCMP</span> 40th Anniver­sary Open­ing Con­cert: Points in Recent History” »

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” »

Rat­ing: 3 stars out of 5

sfSound’s lat­est con­cert on Sat­ur­day 23 Jan 2010 was head­lined by Ligeti’s well-known Cham­ber Con­certo, which closed the con­cert, and was pre­ceded by 10 shorter pre­mières by up-and-comping Bay Area com­posers, mainly stu­dents, but also includ­ing some inter­est­ing other per­spec­tives, like Deer­hoof drum­mer Greg Saunier. This con­cept has some def­i­nite advan­tages. It affords oppor­tu­ni­ties to a lot of less expe­ri­enced com­posers in a rel­a­tively eco­nom­i­cally way, while at the same time ensur­ing an audi­ence for them by pro­gram­ming a new music “hit” like Ligeti’s Cham­ber Con­certo.

How­ever, the for­mat also presents some chal­lenges to audi­ence and ensem­ble, because a lot of rel­a­tively diverse music is pre­sented in the course of an evening. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: sfSound’s Small Pack­ages: Ligeti’s Cham­ber Con­certo and lots and lots of Shorter Works” »

Rat­ing: 3.5 stars out of 5

George Ben­jamin was the San Fran­cisco Sym­phony’s composer-in-residence this month for this year’s instal­la­tion of their Project San Fran­cisco. Truth­fully, I was not famil­iar with Benjamin’s work, but it came highly rec­om­mended by many of my col­leagues, and so I looked for­ward to hear­ing it. I attended the SFS’s final con­cert with Ben­jamin on Sat­ur­day night (16 Jan 2010), where he con­ducted two of his pieces: Ringed by the Flat Hori­zon (1980), the piece that brought him to inter­na­tional atten­tion, and a more recent piece, Duet (2008; see YouTube video below). In gen­eral, while I found Benjamin’s pieces highly com­pe­tent works, I don’t think he lives up to the (per­haps unfairly) high stan­dard peo­ple attribute to him. Con­tinue read­ing “Review: George Benjamin’s <em>Duet</em> with the San Fran­cisco Symphony” »