
The Songbook features new solo works, duets and ensemble pieces by some of today's leading composers of new classical music including Matthew Aucoin, Lembit Beecher, Conrad Cummings, Jonathan Dawe, Evan Fein, Daniel Felsenfeld, Herschel Garfein, Whitney George, Marie Incontrera, Laura Kaminsky, Libby Larsen, Hannah Lash, Missy Mazzoli, Jessie Montgomery, Robert Paterson, Paola Prestini, Kevin Puts, Kamala Sankaram, Gregory Spears, and Bora Yoon.
The second volume builds on the success of the initial Five Borough Songbook, which was developed during 5BMF's fifth anniversary season, and also featured twenty commissions from twenty different composers that were presented in concerts in all five boroughs, and preserved as a two-disc recording that topped the Billboard classical charts.
Both concerts on February 11th and 12th are preceded by a one-hour "Composer Chat" featuring Songbook creators. Future performances of the Five Borough Songbook, Volume II will be held in The Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island throughout 2017, with concert dates and locations to be announced.
Tickets: $40 for VIP, $30 for general admission, $20 for students and seniors, available at www.5bmf.org
For more information, visit http://5bmf.org/five-borough-songbook/
--Katlyn Morahan, Morahan Arts and Media
West Edge Opera Announces Snapshot Cast and Orchestra
West Edge Opera is proud to announce the artists involved in Snapshot. Over the course of two programs presented in both Berkeley and San Francisco, Snapshot presents excerpts from eight previously unproduced operas by Northern California composers and librettists. Snapshot's chamber orchestra is comprised of members of San Francisco contemporary music ensemble Earplay and will be led by Earplay's Mary Chun and West Edge Opera Music Director Jonathan Khuner.
The first Snapshot program takes place at 8 p.m. on January 21st at Berkeley's David Brower Center (2150 Allston Way) and at 3 p.m. on January 22nd at San Francisco's Bayview Opera House (4705 3rd Street). The cast of the first Snapshot program includes mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott, soprano Chelsea Hollow, soprano Ann Moss, soprano Kristen Princiotta, baritone Jason Sarten, mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich, soprano Shawnette Sulker, and tenor Jacob Thompson. Comprised of members of San Francisco-based new music ensemble Earplay, the orchestra for Snapshot's first program includes pianist Karen Rosenak, violinist Terrie Baune, cellist Dan Reiter, bassist Michel Taddei, percussionist Kevin Neuhoff, and flutist Stacey Pelinka. The first Snapshot program features excerpts from David Conte and John Stirling Walker's Famous, Stephen Eddins and Michael O'Brien's Why I Live at the P.O., William David Cooper and Will Dunlap's Hagar and Ishmael, and Alden Jenks's Afterworld.
The second Snapshot program will be presented at Berkeley's David Brower Center (2150 Allston Way) at 8 p.m. on February 25th, and at San Francisco's Bayview Opera House (4705 3rd Street) at 3 p.m. on February 26th. The cast of the second Snapshot program includes baritone Daniel Cilli, tenor Darron Flagg, soprano Amy Foote, soprano Julia Hathaway, mezzo-soprano Molly Mahoney, and tenor Joe Meyers. Members of Earplay form the chamber orchestra for the second Snapshot program, including pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi, clarinetist Nick di Scala, flutist Stacey Pelinka, bassoonist Erin Levine, percussionist Kevin Neuhoff, violinist Kate Stenberg, violist Ellen Ruth Rose, cellist Leighton Fong, and bassist Kristin Zoernig. The second Snapshot program will include excerpts from Carla Lucero's Touch, Allen Shearer and Claudia Stevens's Howards End, America, Linda Bouchard's The House of Words, and Liam Wade and Vynnie Meli's The Stranger the Better.
General admission tickets, at $30, are on sale now and available for purchase by calling (510) 841-1903 or at westedgeopera.org.
--Kate McKinney, West Edge Opera
Salon/Sanctuary Concerts: "Of Meistersingers and Mizmorim"
The art world has always been a bastion of globalism, with artists constantly borrowing from one another to create new, previously inconceivable works. In our increasingly anti-globalist, anti-immigrant time, it is important to remember that many of the artistic works that we hold dear would not have been possible without centuries of cultural exchange.
Few people know about the art world's multicultural debt more than Jessica Gould, the Artistic Director and Founder of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts. Salon/Sanctuary is a concert series that presents "early music in intimate venues which complement both the acoustic and the historical context of the repertoire" in order to "encourage understanding among people of different faiths." I recently spoke with Ms. Gould over the phone about Salon/Sanctuary Concerts' 2016-2017 season, "On the Margins," which explores the musical and historical world of exile. Our discussion focused primarily on the next installment in the series, "Of Meistersingers and Mizmorim: The Wandering Troubador, The Origins of Klezmer, and the Medieval Roots of Wagnerian Fantasy."
It's not a connection that most people would make, certainly, which is one of the reasons why I did this. Most of my motivation when programming is to draw attention to less explored avenues of music history--to use music as a window on history. This program doesn't say that there is a parallel between Wagner and the origins of Klezmer (which are in the Middle Ages). Rather, it points out the flaw in the Wagnerian mythology, that there was somehow a racial purity in the Middle Ages, an idea cherished by the Nazi party in the 30s. In reality, it was anything but "pure." It was a mishmash throughout Europe--there were wandering troubadours from France, Yiddish civilization was spread far and wide, and Poland became a refuge for many victims of expulsions throughout Europe.
Music and Texts by Moniot de Paris, Mahieu le Juif, Guiraut Riquier, Obadiah the Proselyte, and anonymous songs and dances.
Corina Marti: recorders & clavisymbalum
Ivo Haun: tenor
Ayelet Karni: recorders, pipe and tabor
Christa Patton: harp
For tickets and information, visit http://forward.com/culture/357582/how-klezmer-music-refutes-richard-wagners-myth-of-racial-purity/?attribution=articles-article-listing-25-headline and https://www.showclix.com/event/Mizmorim
--Salon/Sanctuary Concerts
Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day Concert to Air on Great Performances January 1
The Vienna Philharmonic's annual New Year's Day concert, "From Vienna: The New Year's Celebration 2017," conducted for the first time by Gustavo Dudamel, will air on Great Performances on PBS stations across the country on Sunday, January 1.
For more than 75 years, the Vienna Philharmonic has ushered in the New Year with the light and lively, quintessentially Austrian music of Johann Strauss, his family, and their contemporaries, performed at Vienna's Musikverein. Since 1987, the concert has featured a different conductor each year, and this year Mr. Dudamel, 35, will be the youngest-ever to lead the popular and festive New Year's concert. The Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert is broadcast in over 90 countries and will have an estimated 50 million television viewers, making it the largest worldwide event in classical music.
Among traditional waltzes, polkas and other works, Mr. Dudamel will conduct Strauss's famous "Blue Danube" Waltz on the occasion of the work's 150th anniversary, and pieces by Otto Nicolai, founder of the Vienna Philharmonic. Host Julie Andrews will also take the viewer to picturesque Viennese landmarks, including Otto Nicolai's study in the Haus der Musik, and will join Mr. Dudamel in visiting the student musicians of Superar, the Sistema organization for Central Europe. Mr. Dudamel was famously a product of the Sistema program in his native Venezuela, and this broadcast will offer a special look at these talented musicians of tomorrow.
--Schuman Associates