Author: Polly Moller

Polly Moller is a composer, performer, improviser, performance artist, and curator based in Oakland, California, USA. She practices a lot, writes many grant proposals, drinks a lot of mochas, and serves on the Board of Directors of Outsound Presents.
Experimental Music, Music Events, San Francisco

Note to Self: Find that FM Radio

Middle Harbor Shoreline ParkI write that note to myself about four times a year, and I forget every time, and every time I miss out on a key aspect of the Illuminated Corridor – “a collision of public art, music and film” that persistently crops up in different San Francisco Bay Area locations to work its site-specific magic.

On May 30th the Illuminated Corridor will manifest in Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, at 7th Street and Middle Harbor Road in West Oakland. The public is invited to show up between 7:00 and 9:30 p.m. to hear and admire sounds and visuals created by 30 artists inspired by Oakland’s history and habitat.  Organizers recommend early arrival (since park gates close when the parking lot is full) and layers of clothing against the unpredictable Bay breeze.

Oh, and why do I need an FM radio?  Because every Illuminated Corridor features live music especially for the FM airwaves.  On May 30th the name of the station is Port Radio featuring Zachary James Watkins mixing live input from musicians and sound artists Sean Clute, Phog Masheen, Biggi Vinkeloe, and Michael Zelner.

Other featured installations will be The Shallow Tide, by Cheryl E. Leonard and Rebecca Haseltine, in performance with Ann Dentel and Karen Stackpole; and Building 122, by Artists’ Television Access luminaries Gilbert Guerrero and Kathleen Quillian. Alfonso Alvarez, Keith Arnold and Kahlil Karn will team up with Steven Dye, Ian Winters and Evelyn Ficarra to offer Triangulation; and the Killer Banshees have knit together their newest tour-de-force, The Subtidal Goals.

Naturally you have questions!  Get answers to all of them by reading the Illuminated Corridor FAQ, and don’t forget your FM radio.

by Polly Moller
Bass, Cello, Concerts, Experimental Music, Improv, jazz, Percussion, San Francisco, Violin

Rova Saxophone Quartet and friends channel Buckminster Fuller

Rova Saxophone QuartetSan Francisco is famous for its innovations, its open minds, and its spirit of protest.  In 2005, according to Rova Saxophone Quartet member Larry Ochs, “our government was committing all sorts of crimes against humanity in all of our names. I wanted to create some art that flew in the face of those acts – but not overtly political because that’s not what we do.”

Rova dreamed up an international collaborative work in honor of the visionary genius of Buckminster Fuller and his “Spaceship Earth” global perspective.  “Good works by people brought together from different countries – if only to point out that it was possible for people to meet for the very first time and in a week of collaboration, create something positive for the spirit, and something that was more than any one of the collaborators could create on his/her own,” Ochs explains.  Berlin-based multimedia artist Lillevan, Swedish-born percussionist Kjell Nordeson, Canadian contrabassist Lisle Ellis, cellist and Kronos Quartet alumna Joan Jeanrenaud, and violinist rock star Carla Kihlstedt make up the international dream team that will join Rova in presenting Fissures, Fixtures: for Buckminster Fuller.

The set of pieces combines live music and digital animation in a continuous feedback loop, with the music influencing the creation of the film in real time, and the film images inspiring the music.  Improvisation, as Larry Ochs declares, will ensure that the piece transcends the individuals involved and becomes more than the sum of its parts.  Rova and friends offer up the piece to honor “someone who over 40 years ago was stating categorically that mankind had to find a way to work together to create a one world-system that benefitted everyone.”

Since both performances will be recorded for future DVD release, this is your chance to immortalize your own applause for contemporary music posterity.  The concert happens twice, on May 22 and 23 in Kanbar Hall at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco located at 3200 California Street.  Tickets are $24.00 general, $21.00 for JCCSF members, and $16.00 for students.  Get them online at www.jccsf.org, and by phone at (415) 292-1233.

by Polly Moller
Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, Orchestral, Orchestras, San Francisco

SF Symphony serves up Mason Bates world premiere

[Ed. note: Polly Moller is not just busy telling you about concerts like the one below — while she’s out there pushing for the other guy, I want to mention the she herself has what looks like a great gig, with Pamela Z and Jane Rigler, May 17th at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa Street (between Harrison & Alabama), SF. tickets are $10, and you can see more here. Go, Polly! …OK, on with the show…]

Mason BatesSequenza21 readers are a quirky and unpredictable bunch.  But I’m willing to bet that any of them who show up on Wednesday, May 20, Friday, May 22, or Saturday, May 23 at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco will not spend the first half fidgeting around, waiting for the marvelous Yuja Wang to take the stage, so they can text their friends about what kind of gown she’s wearing.  No, our readers will be on the edges of their seats ready for the world premiere of The B-Sides by Mason Bates!

The internet got a taste of Bates’ new work on April 15th, when the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, led by San Francisco’s own Michael Tilson Thomas, played the final movement, “Warehouse Medicine”, in Carnegie Hall.  Bates explains in the program notes that his five-movement piece is “informed by the grooves of electronica as well as the modern masters of orchestral sonority, and might also be said to inhabit the ‘flipside’ of the symphonic world – a place where drum-n-bass rhythms meet fluorescent orchestral textures.”

The B-Sides is dedicated to MTT, who commissioned it.  The maestro invited the composer backstage during a concert intermission in November 2007, “between Tchaikovsky and Brahms,” Bates recalls.  “He suggested a collection of five pieces focusing on texture and sonority—perhaps like Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. Since my music had largely gone in the other direction—large works that bathed the listener in immersive experiences—the idea intrigued me. I had often imagined a suite of concise, off-kilter symphonic pieces that would incorporate the grooves and theatrics of electronica in a highly focused manner.”

Something else Sequenza21 readers are likely to do, if they attend the Friday, May 22 show, is stick around for Davies After Hours. It’ll be hard to resist, with Bates morphing into his alter-ego, DJ Masonic, and joining SF Symphony Resident Conductor Benjamin Schwartz to host a hybrid concert/reception they call Mercury Lounge: Mercury Soul Comes to Davies. DJs and chamber ensembles will offer their reflections on the night’s concert…which oh, by the way, includes Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Opus 63.

Tickets are available online, and also by phone from the San Francisco Symphony Box Office at (415) 864-6000.

by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

All living composers, all the time

Del Sol String Quartet

Or at least it sure seems that way, when you’re dealing with the Del Sol String Quartet. San Francisco’s longtime champions of new music have a drool-worthy concert on tap for this Friday, May 8th, entitled Mestizaje. Of the four contemporary quartets scheduled for the evening, three are new pieces written for Del Sol, and two are world premieres.  Drool away:

  • Tania León (b. 1943, Cuba): [String Quartet No. 1] (2009, world premiere)
  • Paul Yeon Lee (b. 1970, Korea): “Ari, Ari… ari” (2009, world premiere)
  • Philip Glass (b. 1937): String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
  • Linda Catlin Smith (b. 1957, USA): “Gondola” (String Quartet No. 4) (2007)

Composers Tania León and Paul Yeon Lee will be there in person to answer questions at the post-concert reception. You can also meet the Del Sol members – violinists Kate Stenberg and Rick Shinozaki, cellist Hannah D’Addario-Berry, and violist Charlton Lee (who’s known as “hunky Charlton” behind his back, and no, I won’t reveal my sources).

The concert begins at 8 p. m. in the Presidio of San Francisco’s Main Post Chapel, located on Fisher Loop near the Golden Gate Club. There’s free parking, and if you would rather not drive, you can take the Muni 29 Sunset bus. Tickets are $25.00 for adults, $20.00 for seniors, and $12.00 for students and kids, all sold at the door.

by Polly Moller
Chamber Music, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

ADORNO Ensemble takes on student work

ADORNO EnsembleWhen I was an undergrad at San Francisco State University in the late 1980s, we didn’t have a new music ensemble-in-residence. Like many music majors then and now, we relied on our fellow students to perform our pieces, and didn’t have a professional-level new music group serving as role models on campus.

All that has since changed, and the SFSU School of Music and Dance has the ADORNO Ensemble to take this challenge on. The group has spent the last few years impressing local audiences and getting cordial reviews, including this one from San Jose Mercury News music critic Richard Scheinin: “A crackerjack new music band that plays with conviction and vitality and blows the dust off classical music.” In 2007 they won an ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award, and launched an online composers’ workshop at www.scorexchange.org.

Clarinetist Jeffrey Anderle, violinist Graeme Jennings, cellist Gianna Abondolo, contrabassist Bill Everett, percussionist Loren Mach and Christopher Jones on piano will team up this Friday, May 8th, to realize that most un-dusty kind of classical music – student compositions. Five fortunate young artists will get what every emerging composer needs so badly: a professional performance of their work, plus a decent recording. Here’s the program:

  • Gamaliel Galindo: Among the Multitude for violin, clarinet and piano
  • Ryan Ike: Thermodynamica for percussion and contrabass
  • Natan Rodriguez: Piano Trio for violin, cello and piano
  • Allegra Mitchell: Hush, Hush Sweet Faire: A Set of Miniatures for clarinet, percussion and contrabass
  • Aaron Nudelman: Unforeseen Circumstances for clarinet, violin, cello and piano

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in Knuth Hall in the Creative Arts Building on the San Francisco State University campus at 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco. General audiences get in for $10.00, students and seniors for $5.00.

by Polly Moller