Source Control 262-2185

A few weeks ago, a couple of these objects appeared on the sidewalk along Chestnut Street in the Marina.

They're about the size of trash cans & have locks on them. A tube runs out the bottom & into a hole in the sidewalk.

The each have a military-like Source Control number stenciled on the side. I just noticed today that they've been removed. It's all very X-Files.

SFO: Norma's New Tenor

This past Saturday night I heard Norma again at the San Francisco Opera, this time with tenor Russell Thomas, who took over the role of Pollione after the 2nd performance. The change in cast & the altogether more cohesive performance made this a much improved experience from opening night. Mr. Thomas sounded youthful & firm, & his singing was detailed, with nice dynamic contrasts. I liked how his voice was a good complement to tenor A.J. Glueckert's in the 1st act.

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky sounded even more capable than on opening night & her singing was glorious. Mezzo Jamie Barton's voice was impressively uniform throughout its range, all the way up to a secure high C. Both of their duets triggered prolonged applause, during which the 2 women embraced each other with evident joy. Nicola Luisotti's conducting was dynamic, & the orchestra played with vitality. The woodwind solos were particularly beautiful. The male chorus sounded bold.

I heard the show from balcony standing room, where the voices were so intense & ringing that it sometimes seemed the performers were singing right in my face or that my ears were about to pop. I was in good company, with standees who were attending for the 4th or 5th time. Everyone was skeptical of the production's version of mistletoe, though. The railing was full, & a woman squeezed herself in between myself & my neighbor after the lights came down, then left before the end of the performance.

Norma's 2 children were rambunctious this evening & could be heard giggling during one of their exits. I hadn't noticed before that all the trees are cut down by the end of the opera & that the druids are trapped with Norma in the final moments.

§ Norma
Vincenzo Bellini / Felice Romani

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Kevin Newbury

Norma: Sondra Radvanovsky
Adalgisa: Jamie Barton
Pollione: Russell Thomas
Oroveso: Christian Van Horn
Clotilda: Jacqueline Piccolino
Flavio: A.J. Glueckert
Norma's Children: Oliver Kuntz & Miles Sperske

Sat 09/27/14 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

Mari Naomi at City Lights

Last week I was at City Lights bookstore to see Mari Naomi on the San Francisco stop of her book tour for Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories, a compilation of her autobiographical short story comics for The Rumpus. Ray Shea, who wrote the book's introduction, started off the event by reading one of his own short stories, a rueful autobiographical vignette about drugs & lost love. Ms. Naomi did a slideshow reading of 3 stories from her book & provided a few additional gossipy footnotes along the way. She then talked a little about getting the book published & answered a few questions from the audience. She told us that in LA a man tried to hit on her in the middle of her reading, & she admitted that she & her mother have factual disagreements regarding her story about the death of a bunny-eating snake.

The event took place in a cozy upstairs room of the bookstore & was standing room only. I had a seat against a bookshelf at the back of the room. When I reached behind my head for a random book to read while waiting, I of course happened to grab On the Road.

§ Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories
MariNaomi
City Lights Booksellers
Wednesday, September 24, 2014, 7:00 P.M.

Silent Autumn

Last weekend I had a great time at the SF Silent Film Festival's 1-day Silent Autumn event at the Castro Theatre, where I saw 3 of the 5 programs. Author Donna Hill gave a breathless introduction to The Son of the Sheik, Rudolph Valentino's last movie, & told us that Valentino spent the enormous sum of $15,000 on his own costumes. This was my 1st time seeing the film, & I found it entertaining & perhaps even a bit self-parodying. Special effects shots in which Valentino appears on screen simultaneously as both father & son are seamless. A chase scene over desert sands on horseback has an authenticity that is still spectacular.

The Alloy Orchestra, a trio of musicians playing percussion, clarinet, accordion and electronic keyboard, premiered their original score, which has an appropriately oriental atmosphere & is percussion-heavy & dark. It matched the action closely, though I sometimes felt it missed the film's occasional humor. The performance was loud & lively & received an enthusiastic ovation. The keyed-up audience applauded Valentino's 1st appearance on the screen & when he straightened out the iron bar bent by The Sheik.

The next show was a diverse program of 14 shorts compiled by the British Film Institute & representing what movie-goers saw in cinemas on the cusp of World War I. Newsreel footage included glimpses of Emmeline Pankhurst, the Austro-Hungarian royal family & Ernest Shackleton, who shows off the dogs he is taking on his Antarctic expedition, though the product placement for Spratt's Dog Cakes is rather unfortunate. A travelogue of Egyptian street scenes & monuments was evocative.

It was fun seeing a bubbly Florence Turner in Daisy Doodad's Dial, a remarkably silly comedy involving a face-pulling competition & containing an impressive multiple exposure shot. I also enjoyed discovering the brazenly idiotic Lieutenant Pimple and the Stolen Submarine, a low-budget comedy whose makers were unashamed of their cardboard sets & couldn't be bothered to crop spectators out of the frame when shooting along the Thames Embankment

Donald Sosin accompanied on piano & did a good job matching each film's mood. His jaunty playing felt appropriate to the period. Mr. Sosin also did a sort of reverse lip-synching when he sang along to a song & dance film that once had a synchronized sound disc.

After a 2 hour dinner break I returned for Buster Keaton's The General. The theater was packed, & it was a terrific experience seeing the movie with such a fired up audience. Board President Robert Byrne pointed out Keaton's granddaughter, Melissa Talmadge Cox, & her son in the audience. John Bengtson, film detective extraordinaire, introduced the screening & told us anecdotes about the friendly relationship that developed between the film crew & the residents of Cottage Grove, Oregon, where The General was filmed.

The Alloy Orchestra was back to play their original score for the film, which was percussion-heavy & went into a weighty, chugging mode whenever a train was in motion. The music was loud, often drowning out the audience's laughter, but it amped up the film's dynamism. The energetic performers received a cheering ovation at the end.

§ Silent Autumn
San Francisco Silent Film Festival

1:00 PM
The Son of the Sheik
(USA, 1926, 81 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra.

3:30 PM
A Night at the Cinema in 1914
(USA/UK, 1914, 85 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

7:00 PM
The General
(USA, 1926, 75 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra.

Saturday September 20 2014
Castro Theatre

East German Cinema

I'm glad that last week a friend suggested we go to Oddball Films for a presentation on films from East Germany. Author Jim Morton announced at the start that all our preconceptions about East German cinema were wrong, & he proved it with a clip reel from over a dozen films, culled from his East German Cinema Blog. The excerpts began with a children's fairy tale film boasting psychedelic colors & imagery, & the show was jammed with similarly flagrant displays of imagination.

An extravagantly surreal scene from Die Legende von Paul und Paula references eavesdropping Stasi & shows the title couple making love in a style befitting Burning Man. My film companion & I immediately wanted to see the whole thing. The even more bizarre Ursula, a co-production with Switzerland, has Jesus carrying his cross through a 16th century battlefield in which the combatants use machine guns as well as bows & arrows.

A black & white opera film of Der fliegende Holländer is done in the style of a classic horror movie & looks excellent. A storyline from Automärchen (Motoring Tales) seems to be The Little Shop of Horrors, but instead of a man-eating plant, there's a man-eating car. Other unlikely clips included German hula dancers in blackface, a skinhead biker gang & a fabulously fun 1980s gay bar. Some Germans in the audience helped translate a racy song by Kurt Demmler that accompanies a marionette puppet performing a strip tease.

The compilation ended with several scenes from Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of the Stars), a beautifully photographed science fiction film, apparently set in the universe's weirdest 70s disco, where the landscape includes trampolines, giant snakes & people dancing like ancient Egyptians.

The event was at capacity, meaning that about 40 people were packed into a funky corner space of Oddball's archives. When we arrived, an old NBC news report was running, showing Daniel Schorr reporting the construction of the Berlin Wall. My movie companion came well-equipped with a bottle of red wine and 2 stemmed glasses, then pulled out a jar of cocktails peanuts halfway through the show.

§ Cinema Soiree with Jim Morton on East German Cinema
Oddball Films
Thurs. Sep. 18 - 8PM

SF Opera: Susannah

Last week I saw Carlisle Floyd's Susannah at San Francisco Opera. I'd never heard it before, & neither had most opera-going acquaintances I asked. The story, set in a closed, traditional farming community, is straightforward, though bleak, & Floyd's music is pretty & lyrical. SF Opera's production was all of a piece. The austere yet picturesque sets nicely depicted the remote, rural locations, & the entire cast could have stepped out of a Grant Wood painting. Sharp-focused projections of natural landscapes provided cinematic backdrops & transitions. When the scene shifted from Susannah's cabin to a church dinner, the chorus was theatrically revealed to have been hidden on stage the whole time.

The performances put a priority on character, acting & projecting the text. In the title role, soprano Patricia Racette was completely convincing as a naive, innocent teenager. Though her high notes sometimes seemed pitchless, her singing was nonetheless persuasive, & her act 2 aria was expressive, sad & moving. Mezzo Catherine Cook was an almost comically judgy church lady, dripping with contempt for Susannah, as well as a bowl of peas.

Tenor Brandon Jovanovich was a lovable lunk as Susannah's brother, & his voice was consistently radiant & smooth. Bass Raymond Aceto sounded fittingly orotund & dark as the internally struggling Reverend Blitch. Tenor James Kryshak gave an impressive physical performance as a skittish Little Bat, his voice sounding high & clear. I enjoyed hearing tenor A.J. Glueckert's focused & somewhat brassy sound as one of the community's crusty elders.

Conductor Karen Kamensek led securely & had the orchestra sounding lush. The flute & clarinet soloists sounded especially fine. The audience sat quietly during the silences between scenes & gave Ms. Racette a warm ovation. I watched the performance from balcony standing room, where there was plenty of room at the railing. I had fun trading Bayreuth stories with another standee, & I also could not help noticing that the Opera Tattler wore a blue square dancing dress whose color suspiciously matched the dress worn by Susannah in the opera's opening scene.

§ Susannah
by Carlisle Floyd

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Karen Kamensek
Director: Michael Cavanagh

Susannah Polk: Patricia Racette
Sam Polk: Brandon Jovanovich
Rev. Olin Blitch: Raymond Aceto
Mrs. Mclean: Catherine Cook
Little Bat Mclean: James Kryshak
Mrs. Hayes: Jacqueline Piccolino
Mrs. Gleaton: Erin Johnson
Mrs. Ott: Suzanne Hendrix
Elder Hayes: Joel Sorensen
Elder Gleaton: A.J. Glueckert
Elder Mclean: Dale Travis
Elder Ott: Timothy Mix
Two Men: Jere Torkelsen, William O'Neill

Tue 09/16/14 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

MVFF37: Soul of a Banquet

Last week I saw a preview of Soul of a Banquet, a modestly produced documentary by Wayne Wang about San Francisco restaurateur Cecilia Chiang. In the first half, Ms. Chiang, now a charming & august woman in her 90s, describes her privileged childhood in China before the war & then how she came to open the Mandarin Restaurant in the 1960s, despite feeling excluded by the Cantonese speakers of San Francisco's Chinatown. Alice Waters & food writer Ruth Reichl provide additional culinary & sociological commentary. It adds up to an oral history of a certain class of Chinese in the 20th century. Ms. Chiang's tragic account of her 1972 visit to China is riveting.

The film's 2nd half documents a fancy private banquet hosted by Ms. Chiang in honor of Alice Waters. The camera gives us many closeups of the elaborately detailed preparations & does a good job capturing the textures of the food. Ms. Chiang explains each course to her guests with a story, & the theatrical meal includes paper-thin slices of abalone, 2 tantalizing pork belly dishes & a chicken baked in a clay casing which has to be shattered with a hammer when it's ready to be served. Soul of a Banquet will screen at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 5th, with Mr. Wang & Ms. Chiang attending. There is a repeat showing on October 7th.

§ Soul of a Banquet
Wayne Wang, dir., US, 2014, 78 mins.

§ The 37th Mill Valley Film Festival
Sun, Oct 5 5:00 PM, Rafael 1 (Special Screening with Wayne Wang and Cecilia Chiang)
Tue, Oct 7 2:15 PM, Sequoia 1

MVFF37: Two Days, One Night

Last week's press announcement for the Mill Valley Film Festival included a preview of Two Days, One Night, a drama about social responsibility, set in Belgium. Actress Marion Cotillard is sympathetic & believable as a working-class mother returning to her factory job after a nervous breakdown. She discovers that the company prefers to fire her & give her remaining co-workers 1,000€ bonuses out of the cost-cut. Her co-workers will vote for keeping her job or the bonus, so she spends a grueling weekend visiting each of them at their homes & pleading for her job. The movie is photographed with a bright, sharp clarity & is humorlessly realistic. The run-up to the vote at the end of the film provides built-in suspense. Two Days, One Night will play at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 11 & 12.

§ Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit)
Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne, dirs.
Belgium, France, Italy, 2014, 95 mins.

§ The 37th Mill Valley Film Festival
Sequoia 1, Sat, Oct 11 5:45 PM
Rafael 1, Sun, Oct 12 2:00 PM

Mill Valley Film Festival 37 Press Announcement

Last week the California Film Institute held a press announcement at Dolby Labs for the 37th Mill Valley Film Festival, October 2 - 12. Executive Director Mark Fishkin, Director of Programming Zoë Elton, Director of Education John Morrison & Senior Programmers Karen Davis & Janis Plotkin ran through the schedule, mentioning as many films as possible.

There are 2 opening night films: Men, Women & Children, directed by Jason Reitman, & The Homesman, an "anti-Western" directed by Tommy Lee Jones & starring Hilary Swank, who will be in attendance. The 16-year-old Elle Fanning will be a Spotlight honoree, as well as actor Eddie Redmayne, who plays Stephen Hawking in the biopic The Theory of Everything. Members of Metallica are the festival's Artists in Residence, & each musician has selected a film to present & discuss.

Robin Williams will be celebrated with a free screening of footage from his surprise appearance at the festival, when he improvised an extended routine with Jonathan Winters. The Children's Filmfest has 2 shows in 3D, including a shorts program with a specially created 3D version of the iconic clock scene from Safety Last! There are also shorts programs every day of the festival.

Sweden's top grossing movie last year, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, will be shown, with the lead actor in attendance. Filmmaker Doris Dörrie is represented by her documentary about female marichis, Que Caramba Es la Vida. Laura Dern will receive a tribute at the closing night film, Wild. It's a sign of the times that The Little House is only the only movie being shown as a projected 35mm film.

Just before the press conference began, I got to chat with Ms. Elton, who immediately rattled off a list of documentaries pertaining to the performing arts, including Free, a look at the Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, & Capturing Grace, about the Mark Morris Dance Group's classes for people with Parkinson's.

§ Press Conference
Tuesday, September 9, 2014 10:00 AM
Dolby Laboratories

§ The 37th Mill Valley Film Festival
October 2 – 12, 2014

Up-Coming: Silent Autumn

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has moved their 1-day Winter Festival at the Castro Theatre to this Saturday, September 20th. There will be 3 feature films plus 2 programs of shorts. The Alloy Orchestra will accompany the features The Son of the Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino in his last role, & The General, Buster Keaton's masterpiece. Pianist Donald Sosin will accompany Laurel & Hardy shorts, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & a program of shorts evoking the world of 1914. Once again, it appears that the Castro's organ will not be used.

Festival passes are available online & in person, old school, at the McRoskey Mattress Company's San Francisco Showroom.

§ Silent Autumn
Saturday September 20 2014
Castro Theatre

11:00 AM
Another Fine Mess: Silent Laurel And Hardy Shorts
(USA, 1928-1929, approx. 70 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

1:00 PM
The Son of the Sheik
(USA, 1926, 81 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra

3:30 PM
A Night at the Cinema in 1914
(USA/UK, 1914, 85 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

7:00 PM
The General
(USA, 1926, 75 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra

9:00 PM
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(Germany, 1920, Directed by Robert Wiene, 75 minutes)
Musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin

SF Opera: Norma

Last weekend I heard Norma at opening night of the San Francisco Opera. Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was a powerhouse in the title role. She has a big voice & sang with athletic stamina & focus the entire evening. Her low notes were sturdy & strong, & her voice was penetrating high up. She created a feeling of suspense when she sang quiet, hovering high notes with incredible control. It was a consistently potent performance. Mezzo Jamie Barton was terrific as Adalgisa. She sang her first phrases with such softness & security that I immediately felt confident about the rest of her performance. Her voice was lovely, smooth & floating throughout its range, which was often high this evening.

Tenor Marco Berti as Pollione was a forceful singer & seemed to be using a lot of muscle to get through the show. Tenor A.J. Glueckert's voice is distinctively clear & flowing. He was a reproving Flavio & communicated urgency. Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn sounded suitably sober & stern as Oroveso. The male chorus was great, sounding unified & unhesitant. Two very small boys portrayed Norma's children. They were cute & well-behaved & even briefly got the whole stage to themselves at the beginning of act 2.

The production's single set is a huge decorated wall that is the entire height of the stage. We get occasional glimpses of a winter landscape on the other side. The staging is static & did not help to involve me in the story. There is real fire onstage in the final scene, but the flames last only a few seconds. The costumes did not make me think of druids or Roman soldiers. I heard someone comment later that the shimmery dress worn by Norma in the 1st act seemed more Las Vegas than pagan Gaul. Apparently Norma wore facial tattoos during the dress rehearsal, but these were evidently removed by opening night.

I liked Maestro Nicola Luisotti's vigorous conducting. The orchestra's playing was vivid, & the woodwinds sounded sheen. The reaction of the opening night audience was surprisingly tame, despite great singing by the leading ladies. Perhaps there was too much competition from the many glamorous women of all ages in the audience. Tenor Russell Thomas will sing Pollione in the remaining performances.

§ Norma
Vincenzo Bellini / Felice Romani

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Kevin Newbury

Norma: Sondra Radvanovsky
Adalgisa: Jamie Barton
Pollione: Marco Berti
Oroveso: Christian Van Horn
Clotilda: Jacqueline Piccolino
Flavio: A.J. Glueckert
Norma's Children: Oliver Kuntz & Miles Sperske

Fri 09/5/14 8:00pm
War Memorial Opera House

Standees at Opening Night of SF Opera

Friday night I was at San Francisco Opera's opening night, where I saw Norma in downstairs standing room with friends. I got to the opera house at 8 in the morning & was surprised to find myself the 2nd in line for standing room tickets. Ahead of me was a cheerful patron who had driven up from Pacifica & arrived at 5:30am. Among other things, she told me the story of the opening night when ACT UP stormed the theater & she mistakenly maced baritone Timothy Noble, who was a cover for that evening's show & happened to be watching from standing room.

When the box office opened at 10am on the dot, there were hardly more than 20 people in line. I could have arrived at 9 & still gotten a ticket number in the single digits. Later on, veterans of standing room told me how much more competitive it used to be. When I was reunited with my fellow standees 9 hours later, someone commented that we all clean up good.

§ Norma
San Francisco Opera
Opening Night
Fri 09/5/14 8:00pm

Deaglán Ó Donghaile at the Mechanics' Institute

Last week the Mechanics' Institute & The Irish Literary & Historical Society hosted a talk by visiting scholar Deaglán Ó Donghaile on the political subtext of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Bram Stoker was an Irishman & the well-connected theatrical manager of Henry Irving. In Mr. Ó Donghaile's reading, Stoker made subtle references to Ireland's status as an occupied country. Dracula resembles an Anglo-Irish landlord, running a surveillance state, devastating the land & literally feeding off his people. The vampire hunters are a secret society, bound by an oath & akin to the Fenian Brotherhood. Stoker even originally planned to kill Dracula by the classic terrorist method of dynamite. The novel's stabbing death of Dracula echoes the Phoenix Park Killings, an assassination of English political appointees in Dublin. Mr. Ó Donghaile admitted that Dracula is an "over-determined" text, which has been interpreted as being about anything from feminism to the spread of disease, but his observations were convincing, as was his thick Irish accent. Mr. Ó Donghaile also showed us a couple of entertaining political cartoons, including one from the 19th century depicting San Francisco landlords as vampire bats.

§ Bram Stoker's Dracula and Irelands Gothic History
A talk by Dr. Deaglán Ó Donghaile
Tuesday, September 02, 2014 - 6:00pm
Mechanics' Institute

SF Zine Fest 2014

Last Sunday afternoon I visited the SF Zine Fest, an annual local expo of independent publishing, comics, zines & art. The expo was still busy when it ended at 4p, but I got there too late in the afternoon & had to rush through it. I did manage to see a lot of familiar faces, though. I liked the detailed illustrations using multiple levels of grey inside The Palace of Ashes, Andy Warner's brief history of the Columbarium, & it was impressive to see the hardback version of Alec Longstreth's Basewood. Its successful Kickstarter campaign is a model of transparency. I was alarmed & frankly nonplussed when Jason Shiga confidently explained to me that he expects to complete his 720-page comic, Demon, in 2 years. I loved the crafty items & origami-style books made from found papers at the table of Mad Made SF, whose proprietors gave me quite a hard sell.

The expo occupied 2 rooms in the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park, near 9th Avenue & Lincoln. In the past, people in the smaller room have complained about not getting enough foot traffic, so this year attendees were funneled through the smaller room when they first entered. As a result, I heard exhibitors in the larger room say they weren't getting as many visitors. Someone announced the expo's workshops & panels by walking through the expo & yelling, which everyone agreed was much better than the blaring PA system used in the past.

§ San Francisco Zine Fest 2014
Saturday 08/30: 11am - 5pm
Sunday 08/31: 11am - 4pm
San Francisco County Fair Building
Golden Gate Park

James Rodgers Sings Weill

Last weekend I was fortunate to attend a house concert & hear tenor James Rodgers, a former Merola Artist, in a recital of Kurt Weill songs. Before each number, Mr. Rodgers read from extensively prepared notes, giving us political & biographical context for each selection. It was nice that the substantial program included mostly less familiar songs. The 1st half had songs in German & French, & the 2nd half was largely devoted to Weill's Broadway career.

Mr. Rodgers acted the songs as well as sang them, embodying a character for each one. His voice sounded comfortable & unforced in the middle & lower range. He often sounded like he was right at the break in his voice for the higher notes. His diction was clear, & his style suited the Broadway numbers well. In "Der Bäcker backt ums Morgenrot" & "J'attends un navire" he did a good job tracing a story arc of shifting moods. His rendition of "Youkali" in particular had a range of dynamic levels & contrasting emotions.

Pianist Jillian Zack was a careful & supportive accompanist, & her playing was engaged & precise without being distracting. She also played under Mr. Rodgers's spoken narrations, giving the program a continuous flow, though this meant that neither performer could rest. I found out later that constantly switching between talking & singing is hard on the voice, & it was a relief to see Mr. Rodgers accept a glass of water from the concert's host midway through the 1st half.

I was very happy to be in such an intimate setting, where the singer could make eye contact with individual audience members. There were around 50 attendees, in a high-ceilinged room with good acoustics. In honor of Mr. Rodgers's country of birth, wine from New Zealand was available afterward. For those unable to hear Mr. Rodgers live, he has just released a CD of Weill songs. A companion Website contains his substantial program notes.

§ Exiled: The Evolution of Kurt Weill
James Benjamin Rodgers - Tenor
Jillian Zack - Piano

"Was wir Versprechen" from Die Bürgschaft
Lyrics by Caspar Neher

"Der Bäcker backt ums Morgenrot" from Der Silbersee
Lyrics by George Kaiser

Lotterieagents Tango from Der Silbersee
Lyrics by George Kaiser

"Es Regnet"
Poem by Jean Cocteau

"Játtends un navire" from Marie Galante
Lyrics by Jacques Deval

Juan's Lied from Der Kuhandel
Lyrics by Robert Vambery

Youkali
Poem by Roger Fernay

"Oh the Rio Grande" from Johnny Johnson
Lyrics by Paul Green

"Johnny's Song" from Johnny Johnson
Lyrics by Paul Green

"The Saga of Jenny" from Lady in the Dark
Lyrics by Ira Gershwin

"Oh Captain! My Captain!" from Four Songs of Walt Whitman
Poem by Walt Whitman

"Westwind" from One Touch of Venus
Lyrics by Ogden Nash

"Wie lange noch"
Poem by Walter Mehring

"A Rhyme for Angela" from Firebrand of FlorenceLyrics by Ira Gershwin

"Lonely House" from Street Scene
Lyrics by Langston Hughes

"Here I'll Stay" from Love Life
Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

"Lost in the Stars" from Lost in the Stars
Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson

"This Time Next Year" from A Raft on the River
Lyrics by Maxwell Anderson

"Mac the Knife" from Threepenny Opera
Lyrics by Bertolt Brecht
Translation by Mark Blitzstein

San Francisco, August 30th, 2014