[youtube]6J14flyMOQo[/youtube] Human behavior’s funny. The more we try to change the more we don’t seem able to. Are we cursed to repeat the same mistakes in our private lives — with lovers, friends — as well as in our public ones? Are we genetically condemned to disjunction, discord, and war, like Sisyphus trying to keep that enormous rock from crushing him each day? Philip Glass’ SF Opera commission, APPOMATTOX, which world premiered 5 October, and which I caught 16 October, seems to accept these things as givens. Its ostensible subject is Robert E. Lee’s surrender to U.S. Grant at Appomattox
Read moreAmericans like to sit on their hands. Even when they’re telling the truth you have to worry. Are you trying to take something from me, steal my identity, assault my assiduously guarded self-image? I may be feeling something, but you’ll have to read between the lines. God forbid I should tell you what and why, and if I do it will likely be too late. These curious thoughts came to mind when I caught Lebanese oud master-composer-singer Marcel Khalife and his ensemble for the second time — the first was at New York’s Town Hall in 2004 — at San
Read moreTurning 70 is a big deal for most people, and especially so for Philip Glass, whose birthday is being celebrated worldwide big time. He’s just been feted in New York by Music At The Anthology (MATA), and Groningen, Holland, is putting on a Glass Festival. The composer and The Philip Glass Ensemble performed his massive compendium of minimalist moves, Music in 12 Parts (1971-74), this summer in the Hague and the San Francisco Bay Area pays its homage with the world premiere of his SF Opera commission, Appomattox, this coming Friday, October 5. Glass is such a big name, and pervasive influence–I caught a chord progression in a dance
Read moreItaly has produced great pianists like Busoni, Michelangeli, and Pollini. Its current pianist in the running for that distinction, Marino Formenti, even hails from Pollini’s hometown, Milan, where he was born in October 1965. Formenti has been dubbed ” a Glenn Gould for the 21st century ” by The LA TIMES’ Mark Swed, which probably refers to his Gould-like obsessive-compulsive absorption in the music he performs, as well as the widely divergent composers he programs. These traits were certainly center stage in the last of 3 San Francisco Piano Trips programs — the first consisted of Kurtag and 17 other
Read moreEverybody likes to grouse about the weather, and East Coasters, who’ve moved to California, may expect sun 24/7. And though that’s never the case here in San Francisco, the climate, and especially the cultural climate on both coasts, does have one very definite thing in common — the dearth of welcome homes for new music, plus a congenial band to spread the word. New York has the long-running American Composers Orchestra, the S.E.M. Ensemble, and Bang On A Can, and the Bay Area, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, which has been in operation for three years. Its March 10th
Read moreAny musical work which has a long. complex, and– dare I say it? –troubled history — can’t help but raise a red flag. Is the artist wrestling with something alive and kicking, or is he or she merely tinkering? Lou Harrsion’s “gay opera” Young Caesar, which began as a 1969 commission from the group Encounters, was first staged as a puppet opera for vocalists and 5 instrumentalists. A subsequent version, for 11 instrumentalists, onstage singers, and full chorus, followed, and this one, performed by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in 1988, was roundly criticized, though the performers, some of whom
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