Not For Fun Only

Occupy the Banks

2012-01-26T23:26:00.000-08:00

Hacked Muni shelter ad at Mission and Third Streets. The alternations are under the glass.

Noontime Concerts: French Music Festival

2012-01-25T18:11:00.000-08:00

As part of their French Music Festival, the inaccurately-named Noontime Concerts presented tenor Brian Thorsett with French horn player Kevin Rivard & pianist Dmitriy Cogan on Tuesday. The program was all short pieces & made me feel I was in a comfy sofa in a French drawing room, having tea & cookies. Mr. Thorsett has a clear, bell-like voice, though his highest notes sounded thin. He sang the 5 songs by Dorumsgaard with a sweet simplicity & was often very soft, creating an intimate mood. Both the Aubade aria by Lalo & the Elégie by Massenet had a languid, stretched-out feel. He did a nice falsetto in the Lalo & a smooth crescendo/diminuendo at the end of the Massenet.

Horn player Kevin Rivard accompanied Mr. Thorsett in the pieces by Mercadante & Massenet & was soloist for pieces by Dukas & Gartenlaub. His playing was consistently smooth, clean and warm, & he had great dynamic control. He did a terrific trill in the Mercadante. I liked the way he could make the horn sound like it was echoing from far away. Gartnelaub's Pour Le Cor was the one modern-sounding piece & was moody, mysterious & urgent. It received extended applause. Mr. Cogan is a dainty pianist who executes run and tremolos very rapidly & evenly. He looks cheerful when he plays. The 3 musicians achieved a good balance despite the echoey church acoustic.

Mr. Thorsett told us that Massenet's Elégie was the audience participation portion of the program & invited us to sing along if we knew the words, or to "just sound French." I did not hear anyone join in.

§ Noontime Concerts
French Music Festival

Kevin Rivard, horn
Brian Thorsett, tenor
Dmitriy Cogan, piano

F. S. Mercadante: L'Appel du Chasseur
Paul Dukas: Villanelle
Arne Dorumsgaard: 5 Early French Songs
L'Amour de moy
Cashez, beaux yeux
Cette année si belle
Que je plains tous ces esprits
Le célèbre menuet d'exaudet
Jules Massenet: Amour Benis
Edouard Lalo: "Aubebe" from Le Roi d'Ys
Odette Gartenlaub: Pour Le Cor
Jules Massenet: Elégie

Tuesday, January 24 12:30 p.m.
Old St. Mary’s Cathedral

§ Photo of Mr. Rivard by Heather George

Cantor Arts Center

2012-01-20T09:30:00.000-08:00

Looking for something to keep me off the Internet on Wednesday, I took a field trip to the Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford campus. After a calming 20 minute walk from Caltrain, I ate at the museum's tiny cafe & then wandered the 2 floors of galleries at random. The collection's variety surprised me. I came across such diverse objects as Rodin drawings, a finely carved Egyptian stela, a Henry Fuseli painting, Japanese netsukes & photos by Edward Weston. There are some really fun pieces currently on display, such as Duane Hanson's slovenly realistic Slab Man & William Kentridge's anamorphic Medusa drawing, which needs to be viewed in a cylindrical mirror. A massive walk-through Richard Serra is behind the museum.

There are also some real howlers. In the 1890s, Mrs. Stanford put her jewelry up for sale to raise funds for the University, & she had Astley David Middleton Cooper paint a wall-sized portrait of them, complete with lot numbers. As it turned out, she was unable to find buyers. Truly reprehensible is The Accident (1899) by Willem Geets, which depicts a Medieval Belgian crowd watching a man strip down before he jumps into a canal to rescue a drowning child.

Sneak Preview of The Great Gatsby

2012-01-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

Tuesday evening Ensemble Parallèle held an informative preview event for their up-coming production of John Harbison's opera of The Great Gatsby. Composer Jacques Desjardins gave us a detailed explanation of his reorchestration for chamber ensemble. His challenge was to use fewer instruments yet preserve the original score's orchestral colors. He proudly showed us pages of the score demonstrating his solutions for replacing the "singular voice of the harp" with other instruments. Harbison himself has sanctioned Mr. Desjardins's work.

Conductor Nicole Paiement laid out the opera's structure & pointed out musical motifs & places where the orchestra foreshadows the story. Her close study of the score was evident. 6 members of the cast were on hand to perform excerpts, accompanied by the piano. All the singers dropped easily into their roles. Soprano Susannah Biller is a strong & steady-voiced Daisy, & I liked the sultry passage we heard with her & mezzo Julienne Walker as Jordan. Tenor Dan Snyder sounds appropriately firm & muscular as Tom Buchanan. Mezzo Erin Neff was a very direct actress as Myrtle in her Train Aria, & baritone Jason Detwiler fittingly reflective in one of Nick Caraway's arias. Tenor Marco Panuccio as Gatsby sounded suave & was lightly comic in a short dialogue accompanied by one of Harbisons' original jazz tunes. We also heard an ensemble with multiple characters expressing their differing thoughts, which Ms. Paiement described as Mozart-like.

Finally director Brian Staufenbiel discussed the staging. He claimed to "abandon realism" in the set design, though the pictures he showed us clearly indicated the locations, but without filling them up with realistic details. Video projections will animate the sets both from behind & in front, & Mr. Staufenbiel showed us a video for the eyeglasses billboard, which comes to life & watches the characters. The presentation ended with a brief Q&A & a reception with the musicians & production staff.

Ensemble Parallèle presents The Great Gatsby By John Harbison on February 10, 11 And 12, 2012 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center For The Arts.

§ Sneak Preview of The Great Gatsby

Ensemble Parallèle
Conductor, Nicole Paiement
Director, Brian Staufenbiel
Pianist, Keisuke Nakagoshi

Susannah Biller (Daisy Buchanan)
Marco Panuccio (Gatsby)
Dan Snyder (Tom Buchanan)
Jason Detwiler (Nick Carraway)
Julienne Walker (Jordan Baker)
Erin Neff (Myrtle Wilson)

January 17 2012, 6:00pm
Sol Joseph Recital Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Best of Annecy 2011

2012-01-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

This compilation of animated shorts from the Annecy International Animation Film Festival got sold out last year, but fortunately the SF Film Society brought it back this weekend, & I was finally able to see it on Friday. The selection showcases a variety of techniques, though there is a lack of memorable stories. The program repeats on Sunday at New People Cinema.

The Eagleman Stag (Mikey Please, England, 9 min)
Intricate stopmotion animation of a fragile world painstakingly constructed of white paper. The visuals illustrate the bitter, existential musings of a world-weary entomologist.

Plato (Léonard Cohen, France, 8 min)
A wordless film combining stopmotion & drawing. A 2-dimensional figure pops in and out of the 3-dimensional world.

How to Feed the World? (Denis Van Waerebeke, Poland, 10 min)
An animated infographic explaining world hunger & food dependency in the schematic style of an airplane safety card. Problems arise because humans can't photosynethesize and there is a market for food.

The Lost Town of Switez (Kamil Polak, Poland, 21 min)
A hallucinatory mashup of computer animation, painting & the imagery of Eastern Orthodox icons. The mix of visual styles is spooky & disconcerting.

Sidewalk Scribble (Peter Lowey, Australia, 3 min)
Wittily animated street sketches, set dancing to a Hungarian Rhapsody by Lizst. I enjoyed its improvisational feel & the observational quality of the drawings. It's the one film I immediately wanted to watch again.

Paths of Hate (Damian Nenow, Poland, 10 min)
A computer-animated battle between to nihilistic 2 fighter pilots, in the style of old war comics. The film takes its violence very seriously & is both slick & very gory.

A Morning Stroll (Grant Orchard, England, 7 min)
In the sick humor category, this film tells the same anecdote about a chicken 3 times. Each retelling is in a different style & becomes grosser & grosser. It's satirical silliness made everyone in the audience laugh.

Chroniques de la poisse / Sticky Ends (Osman Cerfon, France, 7 min)
More sick humor, expressed with flat, crude drawings & a cruel but deadpan sense of humor. Grotesque, violent deaths come to innocent people who cross paths with a dejected fish.

Luminaris (Juan Pablo Zaramella, Argentina, 6 min)
Zany story set to a tango that uses pixilation to animate live actors in a fanciful lightbulb factory. Most impressive are the outdoor shots in which actors glide down the streets along with the sun's pixilated shadow.

§ The Best of Annecy 2011
Friday, January 13 & Sunday, January 15
SF Film Society Cinema

§ Picture credit: Sticky Ends, Osman Cerfon

Period of Adjustment

2012-01-14T01:33:00.000-08:00

I was wary about seeing this obscure Tennessee Williams play, but I'm glad I caught Period of Adjustment before it closes at SF Playhouse this weekend. Weirdly, the play is a romantic comedy. The production is cozy, starting with a very cute set depicting a suburban home straight out of a 1950s sitcom. The married couple that inhabits it even sleeps in single beds. It's Christmas Eve, & Ralph, a Korean War vet, receives an impromptu visit from his newlywed army buddy, George. Ralph's wife has just left him, & it looks like George has abandoned his new bride on Ralph's doorstep. Since it's Tennessee Williams, the dialogue has that poetic quality that makes it seem as if the characters are singing instead of talking. And male anxiety about sexual performance is a major theme.

The staging has a streamlined flow & faithfully reproduces the 1950s. The 6 actors, 3 of whom do not even appear until after the intermission, are a good ensemble cast. Johnny Moreno is darkly charismatic as Ralph, & he does not overdo his character's bravado. Patrick Alparone's performance as George is appropriately jittery, & he makes for a good physical contrast with Mr. Moreno. In her brief appearance as George's mother-in-law, Jean Forsman communicates anger & disgust categorically. As George's wife, Maggie Mason only materializes at the very end of the play. She inserts herself smoothly, & her Dorothea is wonderfully self-possessed & unaffected, especially as she delivers the play's final line.

The SF Playhouse is a tight squeeze for both the audience & the stage. I saw a young woman fall to the floor while getting to her seat in the middle of an aisle. People on my side of the theater walked across the stage to get to their seats, & a few of us helped ourselves to the plate of cookies which sat on the prop television downstage.

§ The SF Playhouse

Period of Adjustment
by Tennessee Williams
directed by Bill English

Patrick Alparone, George Haverstick
Jean Forsman, Mrs. McGillicuddy
Joe Madero, Mr. McGillicuddy
Maggie Mason, Dorothea Bates
MacKenzie Meehan, Isabel Haverstick
Johnny Moreno, Ralph Bates

11 January 2012 7pm

§ Production photo: Jessica Palopoli

SF Symphony with Tetzlaff

2012-01-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

I had a seat in the side terrace for the San Francisco Symphony's well-attended Sunday matinee. MTT led Liszt's Prometheus tone poem without a baton & shifted easily between moods, but I did not grasp the overall structure, if there is one. It was surprising to hear a fugue in the middle of it. There is also an unusual passage for trumpet & tuba. The performance was clean, & the strings played strongly & with bite.

MTT addressed the audience before soloist Christian Tetzlaff came out for the Ligeti Violin Concerto. MTT noted the work's "recklessness" & gleefully pointed out the ocarinas in the orchestra. The piece uses a reduced orchestra, with only 11 strings & a handful of brass & woodwinds, but of course it requires 3 percussionists. Mr. Tetzlaff's playing was consistently smooth & warm, no matter how extreme his part. He could have been playing Mozart. The long violin lines in the middle movements were beautiful, & his chords & pizzicato were were emphatic & startlingly crisp. According to the program notes, Mr. Tetzlaff supplied his own cadenza, which included eerie quarter tone double stops & a spooky passage in harmonics that uncannily imitated whistling. MTT beat time fastidiously & led with relative restraint. The dance & folk elements of the piece came through, especially in the last movement. I liked the brasses' softly played chorale in the 2nd movement, & the entire orchestra played alertly. Mr. Tetzlaff has a happy & boyish stage presence, & he received a warm response from the audience & the orchestra.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 occupied the 2nd half. MTT had a score on the podium, but he never opened it. The orchestra, especially the strings, made a full sound throughout. Every movement seemed to unfold at the same ceremonious tempo. I enjoyed the lovely, pure-toned clarinet solo in the 1st movement & the long, seamless oboe solo in the 2nd movement, both solos nicely understated.

§ MTT conducts Tchaikovsky's First Symphony

San Francisco Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

Christian Tetzlaff, violin

LISZT: Prometheus, Symphonic Poem No. 5
LIGETI: Violin Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Opus 13, Winter Daydreams

Sun, Jan 8, 2012 2:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I saw the new film version of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film's emphasis is on its dreary & institutional atmosphere. Everything seems to happen on overcast winter days. If I hadn't already seen the 6-hour TV version, I doubt I could have followed the tortured plot. We often see only the negative space around events, making it even more opaque. We also have to absorb events out of sequence, & then there's a boozy office Christmas party that the film keeps returning to. Gary Oldman's performance as George Smiley is so calculatingly cold that it is practically non-existent. Afterward, I couldn't remember ever seeing the character move. The cast of venerable British actors may have been underutilized. My favorite moment came from Simon McBurney as a disapproving government bureaucrat, who butters a piece of toast & bites into it quite expressively.

§ Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Director: Tomas Alfredson
France, UK, Germany, 127 min

Oddball Films: One In A Million

2012-01-09T00:27:00.000-08:00

Noting the rise of digital projection systems, Stephen Parr, director of Oddball Films introduced this evening with the claim that "Film is becoming a rarefied thing." We were then treated to a genre-defying selection of rickety, washed-out films from the Oddball archives in a program loosely exploring the theme of money. We saw the opening sequence of $, a 1970s bank heist film starring Warren Beatty & Goldie Hawn. The 1st shot, showing a dollar sign suspended from a crane, parodies the flying Jesus from La Doce Vita. The Disney studio does a terrible job of repurposing their old cartoons to inform us how to be good consumers in Buyer Be Wise. Trader Vic’s Used Cars is a terrific short documentary about used car salesman Victor Snyder, who is wonderfully old-school & has a great line in comic patter. My movie companion & I disagreed later about whether he was actually telling the truth about a sales prank.

The strangest item was an episode of Million Dollar Bowling, a 1950s TV game show in which extremely serious bowlers compete to earn up to a million dollars. Henry Mancini appears as one of the celebrity team captains. The Oddball audience got genuinely engaged in the contest, cheering at strikes & groaning at open frames. The Money Tree, an educational film set firmly in the body-conscious 1980s, is distressingly hopeless as it tells the story of a newlywed couple with too much consumer debt. In The Face of Lincoln, sculptor Merrell Gage molds a large head of Lincoln while narrating the president's life. It is weirdly entertaining, especially when the artist ages the portrait head as the life story progresses. The program ended with a minimally animated cartoon telling the Zen-like story of a poor stone cutter seduced by greed.

§ Oddball Films: One In A Million
Guest Curator, Soumyaa Kapil
$ (1971), opening sequence
Director: Richard Brooks

Buyer Be Wise (1982, animated)
Disney Cartoon

Trader Vic’s Used Cars (1976)
Director: Charles Braverman

Million Dollar Bowling (1950s TV)

The Money Tree (1983, educational)

Face of Lincoln (1955)
Director: Edward Freed

Tara the Stonecutter (1955, animated)
Director: John Wilson

Friday, January 6 at 8:00PM

SFCO: I Like Ludwig

2011-12-31T22:51:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Chamber Orchestra had a full house for their meaty all-Beethoven program at Herbst on Friday night. The Coriolan Overture had snap. The hammer-blow chords, as well as the silences between, were precise, with clean cut-offs. The 1st violins played strongly. The audience clapped tenatively after the Overture's soft ending but applauded every movement after that. Conductor Benjamin Simon led a vigorous performance of Beethoven's 2nd Symphony which emphasized tight articulation & strong accents. He made a clear contrast between the active 1st movement & the more legato 2nd movement. There were nice flute & bassoon solos, & I liked the dialogue between the strings & the bassoon in the 2nd movement. The final movement was rollicking & high-spirited & made me think of Rossini.

Violinist Robin Sharp was soloist in the violin concerto, which occupied the entire 2nd half. Her playing was stately & grounded. She has a smooth bow arm & can really dig in, though her sound is never raw or crunchy. Her high notes are strong yet sweet. Tempos were not pushed, & the 2nd movement was expansive. The orchestra accompanied supportively, & the string section played with bite. Ms. Sharp received cheers from the audience & applause from the orchestra.

Maestro Simon is an eager & enthusiastic speaker. He gave the pre-concert talk & addresed us before & after each piece. The encore was a sing-along to 3 verses of Auld Lang Syne. Maestro Simon pointed out the 4 verses printed in the program & told us to "pick any three."

§ 2011–2012 Main Stage Concert #2: I Like Ludwig
San Francisco Chamber Orchestra
Benjamin Simon, conductor
Robin Sharp, violin

Ludwig van Beethoven: Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony #2 in D major, Op. 36
Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

Encore: Auld Lang Syne

Hugo 3D

2011-12-29T16:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw Hugo, Martin Scorsese's extravagant 3D movie, based on the children's book by Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. An orphaned boy lives in the walls of a Paris train station in the 1920s, maintaining the station's gear-filled clocks, pilfering casually & evading a not-quite-inept policeman played by Sacha Baron Cohen. Asa Butterfield plays Hugo & looks small & perptually haunted. I did not get into the Dickensian plot involving an automaton that draws & a toy-seller's hidden past, but I felt I got my money's worth of 3D effects. Every shot has layers of depth. Even a library reading room recedes a mile into the distance. It's actually kind of freaky when an actor's head fills the screen. It made me very aware of the way the plane of the side of the head goes back from the face. The opening sequence is an amazing, impossible roller coaster ride through the bustling train station & the labyrinthine clockwork interior where Hugo lives. It might be all you really need to see.

The movie is for a family audience, & the story elements are emblematic & tied together at the end of a full 2 hours. Scorsese clearly had fun recreating George Méliès's glass-enclosed film studio & its frolicsome atmosphere. I happened to see this on the anniversary of the Lumière brothers' 1st public exhibition of a projected movie, a snippet of which appears in the film.

§ Hugo (2011)
Director: Martin Scorsese
126 min, USA

The Artist

2011-12-24T02:02:00.000-08:00

The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius's earnest romantic comedy set in 1920's Hollywood, is as ridiculously charming as everyone says. Shot in black & white, using intertitles instead of spoken dialogue, & running at a slightly sped-up frame rate, the movie affectionately mimics a silent era film, though it would never be mistaken for one. Jean Dujardin possesses all the joyful charisma of Douglas Fairbanks & plays a silent movie star undone by the transition to sound. Bérénice Bejo, with her large facial features, also looks like she belongs to the silent era & plays a spunky, rising actress reminiscent of Clara Bow. An early scene where the 2 fall in love during multiple takes of a dance sequence is both delightful & efficient. John Goodman is perfectly cast as the cigar-chomping studio head, & there's even an adorable acting dog named Uggie. Though the story has an old-fashioned innocence, the film plays with its own conventions just enough to give it a modern spin. It certainly appealed to the retirement-age audience I was surrounded by when I saw it. I left feeling happily lighthearted. I'd see it again just to find out if it works that spell a 2nd time around.

§ The Artist (2011)
100 min, France, Belgium
Director, Michel Hazanavicius

Nutcracker

2011-12-23T23:49:00.000-08:00

Prodded by Entartete Musik's close reading of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, I attended the San Francisco Ballet's version this week. I saw it annually as a child, so the music plays prominently on my childhood soundtrack of Christmas. But of course this production is new, so seeing it elicited absolutely no nostalgia in me. The Stahlbaum party takes place in San Francisco in 1915, complete with a row of Victorian houses at the opening of act 1. Drosselmeyer is retained throughout, directing Clara's dream. He transforms the child Clara into an adult ballerina so she can dance the Grand Pas de Deux with the Nutcracker Prince.

The cast features a lot of children & has a high cuteness factor. Clara defeats the Mouse King by putting his tail into a giant mouse trap. The audience applauded the stunningly rapid scene change that reveals the Kingdom of Snow, where the snow falls so thickly that we're practically watching the dancers through a blizzard. The trio of male dancers doing the Trepak was an audience favorite, & I liked the teetering dance of the ballerina doll in the 1st act. Tiit Helimets, the Nutcracker Prince, is graceful & lands his leaps in perfect silence. Sofiane Sylve, his partner in the Grand Pas de Deux, showed off stable turns. The orchestra's playing was clean & breezy. Conductor Ming Luke led gently.

The Opera House is a Nutcracker factory this month, presenting 30 peformances in less than 3 weeks. Artificial snow drifts down on the front steps, Christmas garlands decorate the lobby, costumed touts sell souvenir programs, & there is a candy store in the basement. The family audience was quite dressy, especially the many little girls, who strode to their seats as if they owned the place. While I waited in line for a standing room ticket, a young man tried to sell me two $75 orchestra seats. An excited usher gave me an unused ticket, but when I examined it, it was actually for the previous performance. During the intermission, 2 women asked me to take their picture in front of the Christmas tree in the lobby.

§ Nutcracker
San Francisco Ballet
Choreographer: Helgi Tomasson
Conductor: Ming Luke

Drosselmeyer: Yuri Possokhov
Clara: Rose Ritch
Queen and King of the Snow: Maria Kochetkova, Pascal Molat
Sugar Plum Fairy: Elana Altman
Grand Pas de Deux: Sofiane Sylve, Tiit Helimets

Wednesday, December 21, 7 pm
War Memorial Opera House

Arthur Christmas 3D

2011-12-21T02:18:00.000-08:00

I totally had fun seeing Arthur Christmas, a 3D computer animated movie from Aardman & Sony. The plot re-imagines Christmas Eve as a high-tech paramilitary operation staffed by fanatical, ethnically diverse elves & run from a vast mission control that resembles an overseas call center. For all its computerized efficiency, one gift goes undelivered, & it is all up to Santa's misfit son to make it a perfect Christmas. I enjoyed the movie's goofy & distinctly English characters as well as it's silly humor & just-in-the-nick-of-time action sequences. In a particularly irreverent moment, a "Mission Accomplished" banner greets Santa at the end of his gift run. I also liked the script's play between human skill & technology. For some reason a scene where thousands of elves confront an unconcerned Santa outside his bedroom made me think of the Arab uprisings. It's definitely a kids' movie, though, & the small children & preteens seated around me were clearly entertained. It certainly left me in a good mood.

I arrived late for the show, but the movie didn't start until a good 20 minutes after the scheduled time, after half a dozen previews plus a Justin Bieber music video in which the singer commands us to "Shake, shake, shake" to the tune of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

§ Arthur Christmas (2011)
UK & USA, 97 min
Director: Sarah Smith

Into the Abyss

2011-12-20T18:29:00.000-08:00

I wanted to catch Werner Herzog's documentary Into the Abyss before it disappeared, so I saw it over the weekend in one of the shamefully small screening rooms at Opera Plaza. The movie centers around an interview with convicted murderer Michael Perry, filmed 8 days before he was executed in Texas. Mr. Perry seems amused by his circumstances & comes across as creepy. Grisly police videos & present-day visits to the crime scenes illustrate the senseless triple murder he committed. There are also interviews with accomplice Jason Burkett, who is serving a life sentence, & others touched by the crimes. Herzog excavates some odd corners, such as the freakishly calm young woman who met & married Mr. Burkett after he was incarcerated & who shows us an ultrasound of their unborn baby. An interview with a daughter of one of the victims grows increasingly disturbing as we learn of her family's tragic history & her satisfaction at witnessing the execution. However, the documentary is really Herzog's quiet rumination about the death penalty, & he is especially fond of the former death house captain who became sickened by his job.

§ Into the Abyss (2011)
Director: Werner Herzog
USA, 106 Min

Up-coming: It's a Wonderful Life

2011-12-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I learned that the San Francisco Film Society will show Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life 4 times on Christmas Day at New People Cinema. This is the most Christmas-y thing I've heard so far.

§ It's a Wonderful Life
USA 1946, 130 min.Written by Frank Capra, Frances Goodrich. With James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore.

Sunday, December 25
Showtimes 12:00, 2:30, 5:00, 7:30
SF Film Society Cinema 1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)

Queer Comics Project

2011-12-19T10:14:00.000-08:00

Saturday evening I was a lurker at the opening party for a small exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum featuring local comics creators. The show was curated by students in Justin Hall's Queer Comics class at the California College of Art. When I arrived at the museum I was greeted by Mr. Hall myself, who was dressed as Superman & filled out his costume convincingly. The event featured a couple of super-hero inspired drag performances, & a few people showed up in costumes, but otherwise it was a lot of informal mingling & a chance to check out the museum's current exhibitions. Attendees seemed to be mostly artists & students. I ran into MariNaomi for the 2nd time in a week. When I told her I was reading her memoir Kiss & Tell, she worried that I might never want to speak with her again.

Salon at the Rex: SF Piano Trio

2011-12-17T22:48:00.000-08:00

I didn't see any empty seats for last Wednesday's Salon at the Hotel Rex. In just 60 minutes, the San Francisco Trio presented a substantial meal of a program. Members of the trio took turns introducing the pieces, & there was a feeling of unanimity in everything they did. They played the 2-movement Haydn Piano Trio in E-flat minor with refinement & tight ensemble. Violinist Axel Strauss makes a robust, continuous sound, & there is a lot of variety in his playing. I was impressed by his fast trills. Pianist Jeffrey Sykes plays pristinely, & he executed crisp, rippling runs. The 2nd movement was agile & playful. The trio as whole sounded verdant in the Fauré Piano Trio. I like cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau's effortlessly deep, plummy sound. He & Mr. Strauss were taut in their many unison passages, especially in the impassioned 2nd movement. Amusingly, the main theme of the last movement seems to be identical to the 1st 5 notes of "Ridi, Pagliaccio." The trio really dug into the music, & their performance was assertive.

The program ended with the trio's own arrangement of Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango. It was strong & sweeping, & the trio did not try to make it sound overly pretty. I hope I did not bother anyone when I involuntarily started rocking in my seat. The performance received a hearty ovation & exclamations of "Whoa!" There was a Q & A afterward, during which someone kidded Mr. Strauss about his "puny Deutsch accent." The trio told us of their interest in performing little-known transcriptions, such as Beethoven's own arrangement of his 2nd symphony for piano trio. I was very glad when they offered to play a Piazzolla encore after the Q & A. We got a lively & urgent, if out of season, Primavera Portena for which Mr. Sykes provided percussion by drumming on the piano lid.

This was the last salon of the fall season & perhaps the last one in the Hotel Rex. In the spring, the salons move to the Hotel Adagio for an all-strings series. I hope they retain their intimacy in the new setting.

§ Salon at the Rex
San Francisco Performances

San Francisco Piano Trio
Axel Strauss, violin
Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello
Jeffrey Sykes, piano

Joseph Haydn, Piano Trio in E-flat minor (“Jacob’s Dream”)
Gabriel Fauré, Piano Trio in D minor, op. 120
Astor Piazzolla, Le Grand Tango

Encore:
Astor Piazzolla, Primavera Portena from The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

Wednesday, December 146:30pmHotel Rex

Rhythm & Motion Student Showcase

2011-12-14T00:36:00.000-08:00

At Thanksgiving dinner I discovered that 2 of my cousins were taking dance classes & would be performing in a public program this month. Of course I wanted to see this, but at 1st they wouldn't tell me when or where. Fortunately I did get to see them over the weekend in a dance recital by students taking classes at Rhythm & Motion at ODC Commons. The 70 minute program had 8 numbers, ranging from belly dancing to hip hop. All the dancers were clearly having a ridiculous amount of fun, & the audience of friends & family was just as excited. I don't think I've ever seen my relations moving quite that fast or looking quite that gleeful before. Demand was so high for this event that they performed in 4 shows in 2 days & joked that they needed a union. Before the show I texted "Break a leg" but was apprised that "Merde" is the correct thing to say to dancers.

East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair

2011-12-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

Saturday afternoon I went to Berkeley to check out the East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair, an expo of independent press, zines, comics & art, now in its 2nd year. There were about 50 vendors, & there seemed to be a lot of conversations going on at the tables. It was good to see some old-school xeroxed zines with cut-and-paste layouts & text hammered out on typewriters. I loved seeing an image of a Muni fast pass in annie's ephemera-themed paper suitcase #1. I hope there will be more issues. There was plenty of fine illustration as well. I liked seeing the slow-moving, hallucinatory images of Brendan Monroe. Elle Skinner's drawings are very cute, & she seems unreasonably productive. I ended my visit at a table shared by MariNaomi & Geoff Vasile, who both chatted with me as if I were an old friend. For some reason Mr. Vasile tried to steer me away from issue #1 of Trackrabbit, but I bought it anyway, & then he broke his pen while signing it. Mr. Vasile often seems nonplussed by what comes out of his mouth, but I am sure that I have never called him a used car salesman.

§ East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair
December 10, 2011 from 10am to 4pm
Berkeley City College

Working for the Mouse

2011-12-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

Last week I saw Working for the Mouse, Trevor Allen's entertaining one man show about his experience working as a costumed character in Disneyland. Mr. Allen is a terrific mimic & actor. Wearing a Jiminy Cricket T-shirt, shorts & knee pads, he both narrates & acts out his story. He presents himself as an over-eager teenager, bitten by the theater bug, & he quickly got me identifying with his dream of being Peter Pan. The audience groaned along with his many setbacks, starting when a kid kicks him in the crotch on his 1st day out dressed as Pluto. We learn about employee shenanigans & uptight corporate policies, yet the show never explicitly disses Disney. I believed Mr. Allen's claim that all the stories are true, & he threw in a few asides that made me want to hear even more. He is such a genial performer that even during the black-outs he's bouncing up & down, like a boxer warming up for the next round. Besides being very funny, the show has moments of poignancy & an ending that feels tidy & complete.

§ Working for the Mouse
Written & performed by Trevor Allen
Directed by Nancy Carlin

EXIT Theatre
Friday, December 9, 2011 8pm

Joyous, Jolly, Jingles!

2011-12-12T15:57:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday I was at the Masonic Auditorium for the San Francisco Gay Mens' Chorus holiday concert. As the performers entered through the auditorium, people in the audience cheered & shouted out to their friends in the chorus. It was impressive just to see all 260 members, dressed in tuxedos, arrayed on stage. Though basically a Christmas concert, the show avoided being overly religious, & even the Christmas carols were presented in unconventional arrangements, such as "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" in 7/8 time or "The First Noel" sung over the Pachelbel Canon.

The chorus was well-prepared & made a blended, cushy sound. I especially enjoyed their O Magnum Mysterium, sung a cappella with evenness & nice dynamic control. The show was also very visual. When the chorus donned outlandish Santa hats for "Jingle Bells," we were encouraged to take pictures to post on Facebook. One singer looked like he had a lit Menorah on his head. A verse of "Silent Night" was performed in sign language without singing. A break-out group did a skit about Rudolph that climaxed with a tightly choreographed seated chorus line.

Soprano Melody Moore was a featured guest, & she was clearly eager to be on stage with the chorus. Her contributions included a hilarious operatic parody of "Jingle Bells" & an "O Holy Night" sung simply yet gorgeously, after which conductor Tim Seelig asked, "Wasn't that worth the price of admission?" The chorus was also accompanied by a 4-member handbell ensemble whose frantic version of the Hallelujah Chorus nearly stopped the show. As soon as it as over, some one yelled, "Do it again!" The Contra Costa Wind Symphony, a large wind band with percussion, joined the show after intermission, making for a loud 2nd half. The show ended in a solemn mood, as members of the chorus held up candles for a song called "Peace, Peace."

The event had a friendly, community feel, & the choristers mingled casually with the audience before the show & during the intermission. A string quartet serenaded patrons in the lobby before the concert. I somehow missed out on the free Ghiardelli chocolate handed out to early arrivals, even though I was there well in advance. A scaled-down version will be performed 3 times on Christmas Eve at the Castro Theatre. Ms. Moore is expected to do all three shows.

§ Joyous, Jolly, Jingles!
SFGMC 22nd Annual Home for the Holidays Concert

San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus
Dr. Timothy Seelig, Artistic Director & Conductor
Melody Moore, soprano
Contra Costa Wind Symphony
Velocity Bells

Masters In This Hall
Traditional, arr. David Maddux

Sleigh Ride
Music by Leroy Anderson, words by Mitchell Parish
Arranged for the Los Angeles Gay Men's Chorus by Eddy Clement

Angels In Seven
Music by Felix Mendelssohn, words by Charles Wesley, arranged by Philip Kern

Pop Goes The Season
Various writers, arranged by David Maddux and Paul Saccone
The Lollipop Guild

The First Noel
Arranged by Michael Clawson based on Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel
Arranged for the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus by Jon P. Rollins

O Magnum Mysterium
Morten Lauridsen

Variations On Jingle Bells
Words and music by John Pierpont, additional lyrics by Mark Hayes
Arranged by Mark Hayes

Lulla, Lully, Lullay
Music by Philip Stopford, words traditional
Vocal Minority

Hallelujah Chorus
from The Messiah, G. F. Handel
Velocity Handbell Ensemble

Rudolph and Other Queer Folk
Michael Piazza

Favorite One
Cy Coleman, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green

Twas The Night Before Christmas
Music by Randol Bass, words by Clement Clark Moore

Gloria
Randol Bass

Silver Bells
Words and music by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
Arranged by Kevin Robison for the New York City Gay Men's Chorus

Swing Into Christmas
Arranged by Mac Huff

Gettin' In The Mood (For Christmas)
Music by Joseph Garland, words by Brian Setzer & Michael Himelstein

I'll Be Home For Christmas
Words and music by Kim Gannon & Walter Kent

O Holy Night
Music by Adolphe Adam, words by John Sullivan Dwight
Adapted from the French by Placide Cappeau
Melody Moore

We Are Lights
Music by Stephen Schwartz, words by Steve Young
Arranged by James Eakin III

Angels We Have Heard on High

Silent Night
Music by Franz Xaver Gruber, words by John Freeman Young
Adapted from the German by Joseph Mohr

Peace, Peace
Words and music by Rick & Sylvia Powell, arranged by Fred Bock

Thursday, December 8th · 8:00pm
Masonic Auditorium

Satyagraha HD Encore

2011-12-10T00:58:00.000-08:00

Wednesday night I was at the movies for the encore presentation of the Met's Satyagraha, mainly to see the staging. The production features 12 members of the Skills Ensemble who operate huge puppets, walk on stilts, hang in the air & manipulate low-tech items like newspapers & rolls of tapes. Their ritualistic activities fit well with the score. The use of long strips of newspapers to represent the publication of Indian Opinion in act II was effective, & it was striking to see a human figure emerge from long ribbons of tape in act III. I also liked seeing the text projected onto newsprint held up by the performers.

One thing that does not come across in these broadcasts is the acoustic, but tenor Richard Croft clearly makes a clean, pure sound. His performance as Gandhi was very still. He sang the repetitions of the ascending motif at the end of the opera with great control & nice variations in timbre. Mezzo Mary Phillips sounded powerful & emphatic as a European defender of Gandhi in act II.

Philip Glass's music must be frustratingly difficult to learn, but the singers & the orchestra always sounded assured. I felt sorry for the woodwinds when they had to play those rapid scale passages over & over. Conductor Dante Anzolini created an even, trance-like flow by not over-emphasizing the beats. Act II had an especially sustained & mesmeric mood.

The broadcast was hosted by Eric Owens. Extra features included live interviews with Mr. Croft, chorus master Donald Palumbo, director Phelim McDermott & composer Philip Glass, who claimed that even though Maestro Anzolini's tempos were faster than usual, the over-all running time of the opera was longer. There was also an informative documentary about Gandhi's early years in South Africa. For some reason the clips of highlights from the Lepage Ring made me giggle. The movie audience looked like your typical SF Opera audience, only older. Someone in a seat near the screen took flash photos several times & was yelled at both during & after the screening.

§ Satyagraha
Philip Glass
The Metropolitan Opera
Live in HD Encore

Conductor: Dante Anzolini
Production: Phelim McDermott
Live in HD Host: Eric Owens

M. K. Gandhi: Richard Croft
Prince Arjuna: Bradley Garvin
Lord Krishna: Richard Bernstein
Miss Schlesen: Rachelle Durkin
Mrs. Naidoo: Molly Fillmore
Kasturbai: Maria Zifchak
Mr. Kallenbach: Kim Josephson
Parsi Rustomji: Alfred Walker
Mrs. Alexander: Mary Phillips

Improvisational Puppetry: The Skills Ensemble

December 7, 2011 6:30 PM

Karita Mattila in Recital

2011-12-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Perfomances presented soprano Karita Mattila in recital at Herbst Theatre last Tuesday night. I had a seat a few rows from the stage, & the statuesque Ms. Mattila, a good head taller than accompanist Martin Katz, was intimidating from that close up. She is a singing machine. Her voice has the same viscous & exact sound throughout its range, & she pushes out both low & high notes with the same athletic ease.

The 1st set of songs by Poulenc were charming vignettes in contrasting moods. In Hotel, Ms. Mattila sounded sultry & really did look like she wanted a cigarette. She was free in Voyage à Paris & seemed lost in thought in Sanglots. The Debussy songs were introspective & full of yearning. Ms. Mattila made a quivering, heart-breaking sound at the end of La balcon, & she sounded painfully sad in Recueillement. Mr. Katz was a beautifully precise & sensitive accompanist. His rippling notes in Le jet d'eau were fluid & clear.

Ms. Mattila was appropriately scary in a set of songs by Sallinen about dreams. I found their trance-like chanting & repetition to be unsettling, & Mr. Katz's sharp-edged playing set a creepy mood. The final set of songs by Marx had more soaring vocal lines but was just as disturbing. Ms. Mattila created sweeping climaxes on both high & low notes. At the end of Valse de Chopin, she rested her head on the piano lid as though fainting.

Ms. Mattila possess an unflappable stage presence. When the performers came out for the Debussy set, Mr. Katz discovered he was missing the music & abruptly walked off, leaving her alone on stage. She joked, "This is new," then decided to follow him. When a cell phone rang precisely at the end of a Le jet d'eau, or when a quarter of the audience started clapping before the end of La mort des amants, she managed to sustain the mood.

After this gloomy program, the encore was "I Could Have Danced All Night," complete with a little drunken dance. When Ms. Mattila asked the audience why she was wearing blue, a boisterous Finn at the back of the hall knew it was Finnish Independence Day. Ms. Mattila also told us she now felt free to touch Mr. Katz since he has recovered from his cold.

§ Karita Mattila, soprano
Martin Katz, piano

Francis Poulenc:
Banalités (Apollinaire) (1940)

Claude Debussy:
Cinq Poèmes de Baudelaire (1887–90)

Aulis Salinen:
Neljä laulua unesta (Four Dream Songs) (Haavikko) (1972)

Joseph Marx:
Nocturne (Hartleben)
Waldseligkeit (Dehmel)
Selige Nacht (Hartleben)
Valse de Chopin (Giraud)
Hat dich die Liebe berührt (Heyse)

Encores:
Frederick Loewe & Alan Jay Lerner: "I Could Have Danced All Night"
Finnish Folk Song

San Francisco Performances
Tuesday, December 6, 8pm
Herbst Theatre

The City Dark

2011-12-07T23:30:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Film Society presented Ian Cheney's documentary The City Dark on Tuesday, & I was one of only 3 people at the afternoon show at New People Cinema. The City Dark gently muses on the loss of the night sky due to light pollution. Various topics, from astronomy to crime, are covered in discrete chapters, using animation, interviews & nighttime photography. The film starts with the obvious loss of stars experienced by city dwellers but then moves on to surprising ecological issues. I had no idea that the glow of city lights sends turtle hatchlings in the wrong direction in their frantic scramble to the sea or that lit buildings cause the deaths of significant numbers of migrating birds. Even more alarming was the classification of night shift work as a carcinogen, since prolonged exposure to artificial light dangerously suppresses melatonin levels. The film would seem to represent an activist position, but its tone is completely low-key.

§ The City Dark
Ian Cheney
USA 2011, 84 min

Bent-Con 2011

2011-12-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

On a trip with its definite ups & downs, I was in Los Angeles over the weekend to attend Bent-Con. The organizers describe it as "like a Comic-Con, only gayer." It turned out to be a modest-sized comic book & media convention aimed toward gay audiences. It was 1st held last year in a space behind a leather bar, & now, in its 2nd year, it ambitiously upgraded to the Westin Bonaventure. Exhibitors ranged from David Kelly, the creator of the guileless Steven's Comics, to Patrick Fillion, whose rather extreme sci-fi erotica stories are totally at odds with his somewhat milquetoast personality. Besides the exhibition hall, there were discussion panels, a film program & an animation/fantasy costume contest. There was definitely enough to keep me entertained for a long afternoon. If nothing else, I was exposed to a lot of overstated representations of the male body. My con-companion & I enjoyed how super-friendly all the exhibitors & the attendees were.

§ Bent-Con
December 3-4, 2011
Westin Bonaventure
Los Angeles, CA

Adler Fellows Gala 2011

2011-12-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

Last week I attended the big Adler Fellows Gala Concert, & all the singers seemed determined to give us their biggest & best. The lengthy program started at 7:30p, but it wasn't until 7:55p that we heard the 1st singer, baritone Ao Li, in an aria from Cenerentola. I liked the pleasing ring to his voice & his happy, open face. Tenor Daniel Montenegro does not have a huge voice, but his sound is dark & velvety, & he was a dreamy Des Grieux & Roméo. Soprano Nadine Sierra makes a luscious sound & she got a warm response to her scene from Lucia. She sang clear trills, & her high notes were never forceful. The audience also clearly approved of her & mezzo Maya Lahyani in the Presentation of the Rose scene from Der Rosenkavalier. Ms. Lahyani has a wonderfully full, grounded sound & was convincingly masculine. I enjoyed her even more when she returned as a dramatically focused Didon in a scene from Les Troyens.

Soprano Sara Gartland got a big ovation for her slinky Thaïs. Both her high notes & her acting were assertive & secure. Soprano Susannah Biller sang Zerbinetta's coloratura aria while she paced the stage with big gestures & flirted with the conductor. Her high notes were bright & confident, & she received appreciative applause from the orchestra. Tenor Brian Jagde, in his one short aria from Werther, got cheers for his brawny singing & belting high notes. Soprano Leah Crocetto has a sturdy voice with an exciting tension to it. She sang her aria from Maometto II with control, at one point hitting a beautiful high note that seemed to come out of nowhere. She was even more impassioned in a scene from Luisa Miller in which her powerful voice filled the hall. The audience was so excited that they spontaneously applauded mid-scene.

The San Francisco Opera Orchestra played brilliantly. The strings were tight in the William Tell Overture, & there were lovely clarinet & oboe solos in the Der Rosenkavalier excerpt. I liked the alert & precise piano playing during the Ariadne scene. From my seat in the top row of the balcony the bass drum, timpani & basses sounded like they were right in my face. Conductor Giuseppe Finzi led with roomy tempos that were never pressing. His left hand seems to either float at his side or mirror his right hand. The audience of avid Adler fans gave the concert an immediate standing ovation.

§ The Future is Now: Adler Fellows Gala Concert
San Francisco Opera Orchestra
Conductor: Giuseppe Finzi

Guillaume Tell, Rossini
Overture

La Cenerentola, Rossini
"Come un ape ne' giorni d'Aprile"
Dandini: Ao Li

Manon, Massenet
"Instant charmant...en fermant les yeux"
Des Grieux: Daniel Montenegro

Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti
"Regnava nel silenzio"
Lucia: Nadine Sierra

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart
"Tutto è disposto...Aprite un po' quegl' occhi"
Figaro: Ryan Kuster

Maometto II, Rossini
"Giusto ciel"
Anna: Leah Crocetto

Theodora, Handel
"To thee, thou glorious son of worth"
Theodora: Susannah Biller; Didymus: Ryan Belongie
David Hanlon, harpsichord

Der Rosenkavalier, Strauss
"Mir ist die ehre"
Sophie: Nadine Sierra; Octavian: Maya Lahyani

Don Pasquale, Donizetti
"Pronta io son"
Norina: Sara Gartland; Malatesta: Ao Li

Tancredi, Rossini
"Oh patria...Tu che accendi...Di tanti palpiti"
Tancredi: Ryan Belongie

Les Troyens, Berlioz
"Je vais mourir"
Didon: Maya Lahyani

Thaïs, Massenet
"Me voilà seule...Dis-moi que je suis belle"
Thaïs: Sara Gartland

Roméo et Juliette, Gounod
"L'amour...Ah, lève-toi soleil!"
Roméo: Daniel Montenegro

Ariadne auf Naxos, Strauss
"Grossmächtige prinzessin"
Zerbinetta: Susannah Biller
Tamara Sanikidze, piano

Werther, Massenet
"Toute mon âme est là...pourquoi me réveiller?"
Werther: Brian Jagde

Luisa Miller, Verdi
"Il padre tuo...Tu puniscimi"
Luisa: Leah Crocetto; Wurm: Ryan Kuster

Guillaume Tell, Rossini
"Tout change et grandit en ces lieux"
Tutti

Thursday, December 1, 7:30pm
Herbst Theatre, War Memorial Veterans Building

PBO: Bach’s Mass in B minor

2011-12-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

Friday night I heard Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra perform Bach's B Minor Mass. Conductor Nicholas McGegan presented the Mass as a collection of contrasting movements & led with fleet tempos & a light mood. The 2 opening Credo movements went like a very fast walk. The strings bounced their bows during the Resurrexit. Everyone's heads bobbed up and down in the Sanctus & Osanna. The Cum Santco Spiritu had a frantic pace. The small chorus of 24 was assured. The overall sound was smooth but one could always distinguish the individual lines. The performance featured a lot of precise articulation but a narrow dynamic range.

Soprano Sherezade Panthaki has a pretty voice, with a pure, warm tone, & her singing is very legato. Tenor Thomas Cooley has a clear, bright voice that reaches easily out into the hall. I felt like he was singing right at me. I also liked his clear diction. He & Ms. Panthaki sounded chirpy in the Domine Deus. Baritone Nathaniel Watson's voice has a slight metallic sound, & he sings with a strong center of pitch & good diction. Countertenor Daniel Taylor sang straightforwardly. In the Agnus Dei he seemed to have very little air, &, though he sang all the notes, his voice came close to disappearing. Maestro McGegan & orchestra responded by playing quietly enough not to cover him.

During the duets & arias, the obbligato players in the orchestra stood to accompanying the vocal soloists. In the Laudamus te, concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock gave her ornate line an improvisatory feel. R.J. Kelley struggled with the valveless horn in the Quoniam. We probably heard twice as many pitches as were notated. Stephen Schultz maintained a long line on the Baroque flute in the Benedictus. The audience was quiet & attentive & applauded the chorus especially enthusiastically.

§ Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Nicholas McGegan, conductor

Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Daniel Taylor, countertenor
Thomas Cooley, tenor
Nathaniel Watson, baritone
Philharmonia Chorale, Bruce Lamott, Director

BACH: Mass in B minor

Fri., Dec. 2, 2011, 8 PM
Herbst Theatre

Chancellor's Concert Series

2011-12-01T23:25:00.000-08:00

These lunchtime concerts on the UCSF campus ritually start with a short poetry reading by David Watts, M.D., & this time Dr. Watts read a few of his own published poems. These included 2 poems of only 31 words each & another one written from "a different level of consciousness." Violinist Leor Maltinski & cellist Angela Lee then gave a clean & smooth-edged performance of Kodály's Duo for Violin and Cello. Mr. Maltinksi demonstrated impressive bite on his up-bow, as well as rapid bow speed changes & a strong sound high up on the E string. Ms. Lee's playing is fluent & connected, & she is a responsive player. The piece itself keeps both instruments equally involved, & the performance had the feel of a conversation between equals. I especially enjoyed their long-lined adagio movement.

The half-hour event was held in a lecture hall whose steep stadium-style seating made me think of an operating theater. The acoustic is very clear if a bit dry. During the 2nd movement, Mr. Maltinski's E string peg slipped, & the duo had to stop to re-tune, which they did with great calm & then resumed exactly where they left off. On my way out, I heard 2 ladies tell the cellist how much they enjoyed hearing something "modern."

§ The Chancellor's Concert Series
Leor Maltinski, violin
Angela Lee, cello

Z. Kodály: Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7

Dec 1, 2011 12:00pm
Cole Hall, UCSF

SFO: Carmen

2011-11-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I saw Carmen at San Francisco Opera from a fine orchestra level seat. Conductor Nicola Luisotti charged into the overture before the applause died down. He uses a lot of over-sized gestures, & it was fun to watch him conduct the drum & cymbal crashes. The orchestra sounded bold & luxuriant though not as crisp as usual. I liked the phrasing & pure tone of the clarinet, & the violins sounded lush when playing the death motif. Act II began at an appropriately drowsy tempo that established the mood well.

Mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili was an Earth Mother Carmen. Her voice is dark, chesty & dramatic. I especially liked her dusky singing in the fortune telling scene in act III. As Don José, tenor Thiago Arancam had bright & secure high notes, but his performance did not feel very impassioned. Baritone Paulo Szot seems to make a sturdy sound, but his voice did not carry well, so his Escamillo was not very assertive. Soprano Sara Gartland has a strong, hard-edged voice, & her Micaëla came across as firm. Susannah Biller & Cybele Gouverneur sang & acted attractively as the gypsy girls Frasquita & Mercédès. In fact, the entire cast is quite good-looking.

The production is the familiar one by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, with shallow, frontal sets fitting into a tall, sun-bleached wall. It uses spoken French dialogue instead of recitative, for the most part. The children's chorus was well-prepared & enthusiastic. One very small girl looked like she was 5 years old! In the final showdown between Carmen & Don José, Carmen more or less just stands there waiting to be killed. Mr. Arancam had a little trouble pulling out his switchblade, but he had no problem ripping open his shirt moments later. The orchestra level audience gave Ms. Rachvelishvili a standing ovation. The lady next to me enjoyed the show very much, even conducting along during the Toreador Song. My opera companion was less enthused & laughed derisively at every reprise of the tune.

§ Carmen
Georges Bizet

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Production & Set Designer: Jean Pierre Ponnelle
Director: Jose Maria Condemi

Moralès: Trevor Scheunemann
Micaëla: Sara Gartland
Don José: Thiago Arancam
Zuniga: Wayne Tigges
Carmen: Anita Rachvelishvili
Manuelita: Dvora Djoraev
Frasquita: Susannah Biller
Mercédès: Cybele Gouverneur
Escamillo: Paulo Szot
Lillas Pastia: Yusef Lambert
Le Dancaïre: Timothy Mix
Le Remendado: Daniel Montenegro
A guide: Gabriel Laude

Sun 11/20/11 2:00pm
War Memorial Opera House

SFO: Xerxes (final performance)

2011-11-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

Last night I again attended Xerxes at San Francisco Opera, mainly to be in the house at the same time as 2 friends, & I found the production to be just as consistently enjoyable a 2nd time around. And this time I saw the model bridge in act II collapse, which it failed to at my 1st performance. It was humbling to realize how badly I mixed up the characters in recollection, though. The cast again all give fine acting & singing performances. I continue to marvel at David Daniels's husky countertenor voice. Lisette Oropesa had great breath control & a pleasing warble in her voice. Heidi Stober impressed the audience with the dynamic range of her high notes. Susan Graham's voice is a well-toned muscle. I enjoyed the absurdity of a Xerxes who sings higher than his fiancée.

The orchestra's playing was light, & dance-like. Conductor Patrick Summer often ended the arias with a slight ritard & a soft landing. The pacing & the amusing staging made it easy to stand through the nearly 4-hour show. The audience applauded each character as they were introduced during the overture, though apparently this only happened at the 2 performances I saw. The show received an enthusiastic ovation, & we heard the performers themselves cheer after the final curtain came down.

§ Xerxes
George Frideric Handel

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Nicholas Hytner
Revival Director: Michael Walling

Xerxes: Susan Graham
Romilda: Lisette Oropesa
Arsamenes: David Daniels
Atalanta: Heidi Stober
Amastris: Sonia Prina
Ariodates: Wayne Tigges
Elviro: Michael Sumuel

Sat 11/19/11 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress

2011-11-17T22:18:00.000-08:00

This glossy documentary by German filmmaker Gereon Metzel documents a year behind the scenes of fabled restaurant El Bulli. We watch the chefs developing recipes in a lab, then see the restaurant kitchen in production. Chef Ferran Adrià & his colleagues know each other so well that they don't need to talk much, & the kitchen, though busy, necessarily runs with a quiet efficiency, so the film is weirdly deadpan. There are no interviews or commentary, so I remained unenlightened about the cooking methods & ingredients I saw. But then Chef Adrià does lecture his new staff that the purpose of an avant-garde restaurant is to confuse the diners.

§ El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (2011)
in Catalan, Spanish & French; 108 min
director, Gereon Wetzel

How Music Looks: The Printed Page

2011-11-17T11:07:00.000-08:00

Last night Arion Press hosted a talk by Charles Boone on printed musical scores. Mr. Boone described himself as a "quasi-unknown" composer, & his illustrated lecture focused on unconventional notation schemes devised by composers after World War II. We saw crazily complex scores from Friedrich Cerha & Stockhausen that look like engineering designs or maps rather than music. One Stockhausen score has notes printed on a ruler-sized piece of clear plastic that is then rotated over a circular staff. At the other end of the spectrum were scores that consist of verbal descriptions only or open-ended suggestions to the performers, such as John Cage's famous 4'33".

Mr. Boone also played a few well-chosen musical excerpts. I laughed at Jaap Blonk's performance of Recitation 11 by George Aperghis, which wickedly pokes fun at French speakers. A recording of pianist David Tudor playing Stockhausen was stunning. After the talk the audience was invited to peruse actual scores, which were laid out on a large circular table. Mr. Boone also distributed a useful list of his slides.

The audience was a rarefied bunch. I sat next to a balding gentleman who took notes in a huge graph paper notebook filled with what looked like trigonometry diagrams & formulas. The event took place in the Arion Press gallery, which is open to the public. Excitingly raw pulp fiction drawings by Raymon Pettibon are currently on display.

§ How Music Looks: The Printed Page
A talk by Charles Boone

Arion Press & Grabhorn Institute
Wednesday, November 16, 6:00 p.m.

Systems Mural Project

2011-11-15T10:54:00.000-08:00

Inspired by SFMike's reporting of Brian Barneclo's Systems Mural Project, I set out yesterday to see if I could view it without buying a ticket on Caltrain. It covers a long expanse of wall along the tracks at 7th & Townsend, & since it's basically in the train yard, the best view is indeed from a seat on Caltrain. From street level, I had to be content with viewing it through fences.

Large heads at either end of the picture communicate through a convoluted path which looks like a cross between a circuit diagram & "It's a Small World." I recognized the San Francisco Bay, complete with sea lions. There's also a parade, a polar bear & a buffalo. Even though the artist uses geometric areas of flat color, the mural has a sense of 3D space. The mural needs a viewing stand, perhaps on top of one of those construction trailers just inside the fence.

§ Systems Mural Project
Brian Barneclo
7th Street & Townsend

La Voix Humaine/Pagliacci

2011-11-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

This weekend I attended the opening performance of this Opera San José double bill. I'd never heard La Voix Humaine before, & it doesn't even get an entry in my old edition of Kobbé's Complete Opera. In this hour-long monodrama, a suicidal woman desperately tries to stay in contact with her lover over an unreliable phone line. He has recently abandoned her, & her extreme neediness is both pathetic & annoying. The performance moved at a careful pace & the staging began with a long, uncomfortable silence. Mezzo Betany Coffland sounded secure, controlled & grounded despite her character's near-hysteria. The vocal line is speech-like, & there are no arias. The orchestra punctuates in short bursts, & it seems like they have more rests than notes. At the end, I felt like I'd sat through a play rather than an opera. The supportive audience gave Ms. Coffland a warm reception, & the front row stood for her. The set nicely represented The Woman's posh 1940s apartment without needing to depict every detail.

The set for Pagliacci was minimal, so the attractive costumes instead provided the visual interest. The staging made the action so clear that I never felt the need to read the supertitles. I enjoyed the performance of baritone Evan Brummel, who has a belting, resonant voice & was a skulking & malevolent Tonio. In the final moments, he hands Canio the knife used to kill Nedda & Silvio. Tenor Alexander Boyer as Canio has a pleasant & somewhat light voice, & his high notes are bright & ringing. I felt he rushed through "Vesti la giubba." Soprano Jasmina Halimic is a forceful singer & a fully invested actress. I liked watching her Nedda's wary reactions during Canio's "Un tal giocco, credetimi." Baritone Krassen Karagiozov was convincing playing Silvio as a handsome country bumpkin. I also liked the spirited children's chorus, who have a lot to do during the play scene. The orchestra's playing was uneven at times, though the woodwinds, & especially the flute, sounded fine. The brasses were clean & blended. An error message of some sort appeared on the back projection in the last moments of the show. The audience gave the performance an immediate standing ovation.

During the 1st intermission my opera companion & I stopped by the pit for a chat with the delightful Oboeinsight, who told us that the counting was actually the hardest part of playing the Poulenc. She also alerted us to the intermission during Pagliacci, which we had not noticed in the program.

§ Pagliacci & La Voix Humaine
Opera San José

§ La Voix Humaine
Conductor, Bryan Nies
Stage Director, Layna Chianakas

The Woman, Betany Coffland

§ Pagliacci
Conductor, Bryan Nies
Stage Director, Cynthia Stokes

Canio, Alexander Boyer
Nedda, Jasmina Halimic
Tonio, Evan Brummel
Silvio, Krassen Karagiozov
Beppe, Michael Dailey

Sat., Nov. 12, 2011 8 p.m.

§ Production Photos: P. Kirk

Salon at the Rex: Nadine Sierra

2011-11-10T17:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday soprano Nadine Sierra & pianist Tamara Sanikidze presented an amiable 70 minute recital perfectly scaled to the cozy Salon at the Hotel Rex. Ms. Sierra announced the program as she went along, telling us personal stories behind each selection as if we were a gathering of friends. We learned that she started singing at 6 & got serious about pursuing opera at 10. She began with Juliet's Waltz, with which she won the Met Opera Council Auditions in 2009, just out of her teens. Her singing was joyful, & her high notes sounded relaxed & unstrained. I especially like her middle range, though, which was luscious & sultry in "Summertime." Harold Arlen's "A Sleepin' Bee" was dreamy & included nice little slides.

Ms. Sanikidze also spoke to us between songs & did not hold back her funny & out-going personality. She admitted she "sucked" as a 7-year-old conservatory student in the Soviet Union, but her competitive nature led her to practice 9 hours a day & finish 1st in her classes after that. She responded "Cry me a river!" to Ms. Sierra's story of being made to practice 1 hour every day at 6 years old.

Both singer & pianist worked together to create a full-force climax for Grieg's "Ein Traum". Ms. Sierra acknowledged her Portugese background in the comic patter song "Engenho Novo." She ended with "O mio babbino caro," because she can always make her tough firefighter father cry when she sings it. The musicians did a Q&A afterward, & Ms. Sierra hinted that her goal of performing at La Scala might be closer than she imagined. The last question was, "Can you do an encore?" Ms. Sierra professed not to have one, but Ms. Sanikidze saved the day by pulling out a dreamy Poulenc song, "from my reserves."

§ Nadine Sierra, soprano
Tamara Sanikidze, piano

Charles Gounod: "Je veux vivre" from Roméo et Juliette
Gershwin: "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess
Harold Arlen: "A Sleepin' Bee" from House of Flowers
Franz Lehar: Vilja Song from The Merry Widow
Edvard Grieg: "Ein Traum"
Stephen Foster: "Beautiful Dreamer"
Ernani Braga: "Engenho Novo"
Giacomo Puccini: "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi

Encore:
Francis Poulenc: "Les chemins de l'amour"

San Francisco Performances
Salon at the Rex
Wednesday, November 9
6:30 pm
Hotel Rex

SFO: Xerxes

2011-11-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

This production of Xerxes at San Francisco Opera is so fresh & funny that I was surprised when someone told me it has been in circulation since the mid-1980s. It's set in the 18th century, in a sort of garden of cultural attractions. The chorus, their faces & costumes painted completely grey, are a genteel crowd who spend their time listening to concerts, admiring collections of curiosities & drinking coffee. The supers, their heads painted completely white, shepherd them through velvet ropes & set out furniture for them with choreographed precision.

The production plays like a comedy of manners, & the arias are cleverly staged as little skits. In act I, Xerxes delivers an aria as he trails Romilda during a stuffy art appreciation event. In act I, Romilda delivers an aria as if in conversation with her sister, as the 2 of them sit through a stuffy art appreciation event. In act II, Xerses & Atalanta sit down for dessert in a fancy restaurant then get kicked out when they get too emotional. In act II, Amastris gets belligerently drunk in a fancy restaurant & is kicked out. The characters sometimes gesture naturalistically exactly with the music. Even the supertitles enhance the artifice by being in a singable, rhyming 18th century idiom.

All the performers were lively singers & actors. Susan Graham is like an athlete in peak condition, her voice glowing, sure & steady, & her Xerxes convincingly masculine. David Daniels's Arsamenes is a lover, not a fighter, & I was continually amazed by how strongly his burly countertenor voice carried. It never sounds attenuated. Lisette Oropesa, as Romilda, hit some lovely high notes softly & without straining. Heidi Stober showed off firm high notes & was very funny as Atalanta. The audience was so impressed with contralto Sonia Prina's muscular coloratura that it applauded halfway through her 1st aria. I liked bass-baritone Michael Sumuel's warm, cushy sound & light-hearted acting as "facetious fellow" Elviro. He was hilarious as an unlikely-looking flower seller in act II. Bass-baritone Wayne Tigges demonstrated fine coloratura & comic acting as a proud yet faintly silly general.

The reduced orchestra played with zest, & all of the tempos were dance-like. It was impossible not to sway with the music from time to time. I enjoyed hearing the trumpet, which was bright yet still blended with the orchestra. In that large house, I was surprised that I could even hear the various lute instruments played by Michael Leopold. I spent much of the 2 intermissions worrying over the program synopsis & studying its diagram of love arrows, but the plot remained a puzzle to me.

§ Xerxes
George Frideric Handel

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Patrick Summers
Production: Nicholas Hytner
Revival Director: Michael Walling

Xerxes: Susan Graham
Romilda: Lisette Oropesa
Arsamenes: David Daniels
Atalanta: Heidi Stober
Amastris: Sonia Prina
Ariodates: Wayne Tigges
Elviro: Michael Sumuel

Tue 11/8/11 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

Houdini: Art and Magic

2011-11-08T09:07:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend I saw this exhibit about Harry Houdini at the Jewish Contemporary Museum. It's a diffuse show that mixes period artifacts with contemporary art. Next to a video of the real Houdini escaping from a straight jacket are clips of Tony Curtis in a Hollywood biopic & Norman Mailer in Matthew Barney's CREMASTER 2. I did not expect to see Raymond Pettibon's nightmarish drawings, though I liked their visceral impact. In another modern piece, conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg "disappears" a book about Houdini from the Los Angeles Public Library by borrowing it & not returning it.

Documentary items include old photos, advertisements, silent movie clips & replicas of famous props. I never caught on to how the galleries were organized, & a time line for Houdini appears randomly half-way through the exhibit. I felt closest to the man when examining 2 of his travel journals, one of them opened to a remembrance of his father's death. The entry touchingly quotes his mother's Yiddish speech. I also enjoyed the spontaneous expression on Houdini's face in a 1910 photo with escape artist Ira Davenport.

Gaining entry to the CJM is like going through airport security, only you don't have to take off your shoes & belt.

§ Houdini: Art and Magic
October 2, 2011 – January 16, 2012
Contemporary Jewish Museum

Up-Coming: Tatsumi

2011-11-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo created this tribute to manga creator Yoshihiro Tatsumi. The film turns 5 of Tatsumi's stories into anime-style animation, interspersed with episodes from his memoir, A Drifting Life. Tatsumi's adult comics explore urban alienation & shame, & the stories are dark & grotesque. The animated film closely follows the original comics, simply adding movement & sound to Tatsumi's pages. I like the affectionate way Tatsumi draws himself as a square-headed young man whose face has an expression of permanent innocence. Mr. Khoo's film is intended to honor the manga artist, & Tatsumi himself does some of the voice-overs & appears at the end of the film. There's an obvious gap between Tatsumi's gentle, naive demeanor & the disturbing content of his comics, but the film does not attempt to close it.

Tatsumi plays at the San Francisco International Animation Festival this Friday at 9:00 pm & Sunday at 6:00 pm at New People Cinema. Take the festival's "Not recommended for children" warning seriously. The film contains casual death & dismemberment, copious vomiting & unpleasant sex scenes.

§ Tatsumi
Written by Eric Khoo
Singapore 2011, 96 min.

San Francisco International Animation Festival
Friday, November 11, 9:00 pm; Sunday, November 13, 6:00 pm
SF Film Society | New People Cinema

§ Buy tickets

New Century Tour Kick-Off

2011-11-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

The extroverted New Century Chamber Orchestra starts their 2nd East Coast tour next week, stopping in Massachusetts & New Jersey & ending at Symphony Space in New York. Saturday night was their tour kick-off concert at Herbst Theatre. To help celebrate, they treated the audience to prosecco in the lobby beforehand. Members of the orchestra wore bright red accessories to accent their black concert dress. Leader Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg addressed the audience, though she admitted that she did not know what to say. She thanked the board & praised the ensemble, boasting, "We even play repertoire we should not play!" She also joked that the Rossini Sonata was so hard that the violists refused to play it.

The Rossini Sonata in G was chirpy. Kristin Zoernig's bass solos were neat & a bit clipped. Violin intonation was scrappy, but the cellos were very together, especially in the zippy last movement. The violas received applause when they joined the ensemble for the Barber Adagio, which sounded secure & forthright. Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg stood surrounded by the 1st stand players for William Bolcolm's Romanza, a small-scale concerto written for her. Each movement has a pleasing dance-like feel, & even though the ensemble is all strings, Mr. Bolcolm gets a lot of colors. The 2nd movement opens with a lugubrious bass solo & has moments of eeriness. The soloist banters briskly with the orchestra in the jaunty final movement. The cellos & violas were very uniform in the Mendelssohn Octet, sounding especially nice at the start of the 2nd movement. The violins were often ragged, & they made a scrambling entrance in the Scherzo. The movement was a rapid skitter, with lots of bowing off the string. The Presto felt rushing & aggressive.

After the 1st encore, Bolcolm's Incinerator Rag, Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg came back out, put her hand on her hip & asked, "We have another one. Do you want to hear it?" I didn't catch the composer's name, but I think she said it was a Brazilian song. It featured Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg playing a soaring melodic solo & elicited a standing ovation from the audience.

§ 20th Anniversary Gala: Tour Kick-Off Celebration
New Century Chamber Orchestra
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Music Director

Gioacchino Rossini: Sonata No. 1 in G Major
Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings
William Bolcom: Romanza for Violin and String Orchestra
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin
Felix Mendelssohn: Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20

Encores:
William Bolcolm: Incinerator Rag
Song by Brazilian composer?

Saturday, November 5, 2011, 7pm, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco

§ Members of New Century

Violin I: Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (Music Director and Concertmaster), Dawn Harms (Associate Concertmaster), Iris Stone, Karen Sor, Robin Mayforth

Violin II: Candace Guirao (Principal), Deborah Tien Price, Michael Yokas, Michelle Maruyama

Viola: Anna Kruger (Principal), Cassandra Lynne Richburg, Jenny Douglass, Elisabeth Prior

Cello: Susan Babini (Principal), Robin Bonnell, Michelle Djokic, Michael Graham

Bass: Kristin Zoernig (Acting Principal)

Glitch in the Grid

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

I got to see a preview of Glitch in the Grid, the opening night film of the San Francisco International Animation Festival, which starts this week. It's a fragmentary, experimental movie, containing live-action, stop-motion animation & time-lapse photography. Eric & Jeffrey Leiser, 2 brothers in their 20s, made the movie entirely by themselves over the course of 2 years. The nearly insubstantial scenario shows them hanging out in California, New York & Hastings, England, with their cousin Jay Masonek, who vaguely seeks a change in his life. In England we get documentary peeks of Eric's wedding, a Passion Parade & a spectacular bonfire festival. The animated segments come in short bursts & often utilize stop-motion to animate outdoor landscapes. Piles of fall leaves are brought to life. The images of animated colored liquids feel spooky. A flying dove is a recurring image, & the film's message is about accepting the Holy Ghost into your heart.

Glitch in the Grid screens this Thursday at 7pm & 9:30pm at New People Cinema. Director Eric Leiser & his brother Jeffrey Leiser, who wrote the music, are expected to attend.

§ Glitch in the Grid
Written by Eric Leiser
USA/England 2011, 83 min.

SF International Animation Festival
Thursday, November 10, 7:00 pm; Thursday, November 10, 9:30 pm
SF Film Society | New People Cinema

§ Buy Tickets

§ Photo credit: Courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society

Semyon Bychkov conducts Don Juan

2011-11-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

Friday night conductor Semyon Bychkov led the San Francisco Symphony, & I had a God-like view of the Davies Hall audience from a seat in a 1st tier box. The audience was sparse, maybe because of the concert's odd start time of 6:30p. Maestro Bychkov has a low-key musical profile. He never pushes, though he always looks engaged with the orchestra. Strauss's Don Juan was unrushed. The love music after concertmaster Nadya Tichman's solo felt languid & reminded me of Tristan. William Bennett played a level, almost unarticulated, oboe solo.

Kirill Gerstein was soloists for Strauss's Burleske, a jaunty piano concerto in one movement. His playing was clean & bright. The audience laughed at the piece's playful ending & gave Mr. Gerstein a warm ovation. Schumann's Symphony No. 2 flowed with a regular pace & had a relatively small range of tempos & dynamics. The strings were fast, clean & even in the Scherzo. There were nice woodwind solos in the Adagio, especially from the clarinet & oboe. The audience cheered the performance, & the orchestra applauded Maestro Bychkov as well.

Maestro Bychkov did not use a score for Don Juan or the Schumann. One of the woodwinds, perhaps the clarinet, squealed during the 1st movement of the Schumann, which my concert companion put down to the weather changes in the past few days. After Don Juan, a woman seated in our row asked us what was the difference between the French horn & the English horn. My companion said the English horn "looks like an oboe that swallowed an orange." After the Schumann, she asked us which instrument was the oboe, but she seemed skeptical when we pointed out the 2 oboists onstage.

§ Semyon Bychkov conducts Don Juan
San Francisco Symphony
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano

R. Strauss: Don Juan, Op. 20
R. Strauss: Burleske in D minor for Piano and Orchestra
Schumann: Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61

Fri, Nov 4, 2011 6:30pm
Davies Symphony Hall

The Screen Illusion

2011-11-03T11:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw Mathieu Amalric's The Screen Illusion, which played as part of the San Francisco Film Society's New Cinema Now. It's a TV movie adaptation of Pierre Corneille's L’Illusion comique, made under the constraint that it use actors from La Comédie Française, speaking the original text but in a contemporary setting. M. Amalric nimbly transposes the action to a set of business suites in a posh Paris hotel, where Isabelle, the daughter of a wealthy business mogul, is pursued by 3 suitors. Clindor's father witnesses his son's shenanigans on the hotel's surveillance videos. When Matamore brags of killing people in battle, he's playing a video game. The actors speak so crisply that I could hear the rhyming couplets even though I don't understand French. There are plenty of meaningful silences as well, so the movie does not feel talky. The last scene might be a bit confusing, & it adds its own twist on top of Corneille's original surprise ending. The movie has almost no music, & the audience sat non-plussed in silence as the closing credits rolled.

§ The Screen Illusion (L’Illusion Comique)
Mathieu Amalric
France 2010, 77 min

French Cinema Now
Wednesday, November 2, 5:00 pm
SF Film Society | New People Cinema

§ Photo credit: Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

Hand Bookbinder Exhibit

2011-11-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Mechanics' Institute, in its on-going quest to increase the value of membership, just put up an exhibit of handbound books on the 2nd floor of the library. Tuesday night they held a wine & cheese reception for library members & exhibitors. Members of the Hand Bookbinders of California gave demonstrations & talked about their projects, in the manner of a show-and-tell. A book restorer told us that a repair should never be made stronger than the original material. The principle sounds like it ought to apply in other situations as well.

§ Hand Bookbinders of California
39th Members' Exhibition

Hand Bookbinder Exhibit Reception
Mechanics' Institute
Tue, 11/01/2011 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm

Halloween Concert with Cameron Carpenter

2011-11-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

The Davies Hall audience was in a festive mood Sunday night for organist Cameron Carpenter accompanying Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera. Many came dressed for Halloween. I saw several witches, & my concert companion pointed out a little boy dressed as the Phantom, complete with cape & mask. A bleach-blond Mr. Cameron strode eagerly on stage, wearing thick-heeled shoes, bedazzled pants & a tight-fitting black t-shirt. He launched into the Bach Chaconne in D minor as a prelude to the movie. He displayed an easy mastery of the console, constantly changing registers, & let loose a colorful barrage of sounds. There were moments of exuberant bombast, but Mr. Carpenter could also make the instrument sound very small. He made it so fun that I chuckled several times. The audience cheered the Chaconne, & Mr. Carpenter reacted when a woman whistled at him approvingly.

Mr. Carpenter spoke briefly before playing for the movie & said that he would both follow tradition & depart from it. His accompaniment set the mood for each scene but never drew attention to itself. It utilized a wide variety of timbres & sounded like a symphonic film score. A quiet theme incorporating the tinkling of chimes was associated with the Phantom. There are several performance scenes from Gounod's Faust, but Mr. Carpenter avoided the literal solution of playing music from the opera.

I'd never seen this iconic movie before, & I found it a bit clunky for something near the high point of the silent era. The sets representing the interior of the Paris Opera are impressive, though, & a sequence shot in early Technocolor is startling. I did not expect Lon Chaney's ghoulish Phantom to be more creepy when masked. The intertitles taught me the word "barouche."

The film was shown with an intermission. Mr. Cameron impressively performed the entire program without any music. The audience gave him enthusiastic applause & cheers. They recalled him twice but were not persistent enough to demand an encore, which was a shame.

§ The Phantom of the Opera: Halloween Concert with Cameron Carpenter
Cameron Carpenter, organ

Bach: Chaconne in D minor
The Phantom of the Opera (Silent film with live music accompaniment)

Sun, Oct 30, 2011 8:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

The Kid with a Bike

2011-10-31T12:25:00.000-07:00

On Sunday afternoon, New People Cinema was full for the showing of The Kid with a Bike, a film by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Dardenne. The film won a Grand Prize at Cannes & played here in the SF Film Society's French Cinema Now series. The film follows Cyril, a desperate young boy in foster care, usually dressed in red. He has a brush with juvenile delinquency & works out his anger at being abandoned by his father. In almost every scene Cyril runs away with a start or rides off furiously on his bicycle. The film has a dead-pan approach to story-telling. We witness events, but there is no delving into backstory or inner psychology. I felt impatient as episode followed episode without a sense of culmination, but there seems to be a moral tone to the plot. The film also reminds us how children love their parents, whether those parents deserve it or not. Programmer Rachel Rosen introduced the screening & thanked us for coming in on such a sunny day.

§ Le Gamin au Vélo (The Kid with a Bike)
Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Belgium/France/Italy 2011, 87 min.

French Cinema Now
Sunday, October 30, 4:30 pm
SF Film Society | New People Cinema

§ Photo credit: Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

Kreith-Yi Duo

2011-10-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

On Friday night, Old First Concerts presented violinist Ben Kreith & pianist Ann Yi in a substantial program of music from 3 centuries. The two maintained a feeling of tension throughout the Shostakovich Violin Sonata. The intense 2nd movement was especially driven. Mr. Kreith is a thoughtful player & communicates intention behind every phrase. He even varied the types of pizzicato at the beginning of the 3rd movement. Ms. Yi is a firm pianist who states her ideas strongly, & she played a thundering lead-in to the violinist's concerto-like solo.

After intermission the duo presented premieres of 2 new pieces, each around 8 minutes long. Sam Nichols's Wrack moved restlessly from idea to idea & had a rocking, unsteady feel. One of Mr. Kreith's forceful & stratospherically high entrances made me jump. Mr. Nichols was present & took a bow with the performers. Mr. Kreith had to spread the music for a crowd of twisted things by Christopher Wendell Jones across 5 music stands. As the piece progressed he moved closer & closer to the pianist. The violin alternated between sliding tremolos, pizzicato & long bowed notes while the piano punctuated with staccato chords. The duo played both pieces with great attention.

The program ended with Brahms's Violin Sonata in G major. The 1st movement was fast & sweeping & maintained the lilt of its dotted rhythm throughout. The Adagio had a mood of dreaminess, & the rushing final movement felt breathless. The sparse Old First Church audience was attentive, quiet & appreciative. I had fun chatting with Mr. Nichols about the Museum of Jurassic Technology afterward.

§ Kreith-Yi Duo
Benjamin Kreith, vioin
Ann Yi, piano

Dmitri Shostakovich: Sonata for Violin & Piano, Op. 134
Sam Nichols: Wrack (US Premiere)
Christopher Wendell Jones: a crowd of twisted things (World Premiere)
Johannes Brahms: Sonata No. 1 for Violin & PIano in G major, Op. 78

Old First Concerts
Friday, October 28, 2011 at 8 PM
Old First Church

Steven Pinker: The Better Angels of Our Nature

2011-10-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

Steven Pinker, Harvard Psychology Professor & author, gave a talk at the Mechanics' Institute during Friday lunch about his new book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. He presented the counter-intuitive thesis that violence, when looked at from a long historical perspective, has declined steady across all aspects of society. This is due not to any fundamental change in human nature but rather to cultural shifts that favor empathy & self-control. Mr. Pinker showed plenty of graphs to back up his idea, including a scatter plot of the "100 Worst Atrocities." The book seems very academic, but it is worth considering whether democracy, increased trade & international organizations really do reduce violence. Mr. Pinker gave a prepared lecture for about 45 minutes then answered questions for another 45 minutes. People were generally in agreement with him, though the moderator cut short one person who aggressively disputed Mr. Pinker's figure for the number of casualties in the recent wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Mr. Pinker told us that he has encountered critics who tell him that he may be basing his arguments on data & facts, but he is just wrong. I was surprised that religion did not come up in either his lecture or during the Q & A.

§ The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
Steven Pinker

Mechanics' Institute
Fri, 10/28/2011 - 12:30pm - 2:00pm

Simon Keenlyside

2011-10-29T00:19:00.000-07:00

Thursday night baritone Simon Keenlyside walked on stage at Herbst Theatre with pianist Malcolm Martineau, looked around as if he'd never been there before, & just started singing. Mr. Keenlyside is a complete actor as well as singer, & every song came across with a satisfying directness & spontaneity. His voice is warm & comfy, & he produced a stunning variety of colors. He kept moving restlessly & seemed not to know what to do with his hands. He sometimes reminded me of a little boy. He was so captivating that I couldn't take my eyes off him, even to read the translations of the songs, but I felt I understood everything anyway.

Mahler's "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" was wry & even sly. In "Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht," Mr. Keenlyside surprised us by not pausing for breath during an especially long phrase. Before performing songs from Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad, he reminded us of their wartime context & urged us not think of them as "English frippery." He seemed to be talking, not singing, during "The lads in their hundred," & he ghoulishly channeled a disembodied voice for the heart-rending "Is my team ploughing?" Strauss's "Befreit" shook me with its powerful ardour, & Debussy's "Mandoline" ended the program by wafting softly away.

Mr. Martineau was a terrific accompanist, his playing pristine & musical. His quiet notes were like little drops of water. The audience cheered the performance & was rewarded with 4 lovely encores. Mr. Keenlyside was undeniably cute in Schubert's "Der Einsame", & he & Mr. Martineau got softer & softer during Schubert's "An mein Klavier", completely drawing me in. When the performance was over, I turned to my concert companion & asked sorrowfully, "Is that all?" For a moment, I actually wanted to follow Mr. Keenlyside out. Instead, "An mein Klavier" lingered in my head the whole way home.

§ Simon Keenlyside, baritone
Malcolm Martineau, piano

MAHLER:
      Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!
      Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt
      Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald
      Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder
      Frühlingsmorgen
      Liebst du um Schönheit
      Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht

BUTTERWORTH: A Shropshire Lad (1st set only)
      Loveliest of trees
      When I was one-and-twenty
      Look not into my eyes
      Think no more, lad
      The lads in their hundreds
      Is my team ploughing?

STRAUSS:
      Winternacht
      Waldesfahrt
      Das Rosenband
      Befreit
      Epheu
      Ständchen

DUPARC:
      Le Manoir de Rosemonde
      Phidylé

DEBUSSY:
      Nuit d’étoiles
      Voici que le printemps
      Les Angélus
      Mandoline

ENCORES:
Schubert: Der Einsame
John Ireland: Sea Fever
Percy Grainger: Once I Had a Sprig of Thyme
Schubert: An mein Klavier

San Francisco Performances
Thursday, October 27, 2011, 8pm
Herbst Theatre

Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe

2011-10-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

Wednesday evening the San Francisco Public Library presented astronomer Alex Filippenko in a lecture on Dark Energy. This year's Nobel Prize in Physics recognized the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe, & Prof. Filippenko was on one of the teams that made this measurement. He led us through the background for the discovery & described the conclusion that something called Dark Energy makes up 73% of the stuff in the universe & is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. I found the talk informative & mind-boggling. Everything we can observe, from people to galaxies, makes up only .4% of the universe. Someday the expansion of the universe will be so great that we won't see any galaxies at all; they'll all be too far away.

Prof. Filippenko is an exuberant speaker with a weakness for bad puns, & he taught us the insult "Spherical Bastard." The 70 minute talk was well-attended. The audience ranged from college students to seniors. Judging by their questions, they were a scientifically well-informed bunch.

§ Dark Energy and the Runaway Universe
Alex Filippenko, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley

A One City One Book event
Wed, 10/26/2011, 6:15 - 7:45
Koret Auditorium, Main Library

Kevin Spacey as Richard III

2011-10-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the unexpected good fortune to see The Bridge Project's Richard III, starring Kevin Spacey. Mr. Spacey engaged the audience from the 1st moments. As he slumped in a chair, watching a video of his brother's coronation, he shared his contempt & sarcastic humor with us. His delivery was forceful & rhetorical, & he moved around swiftly, despite a metal brace holding his leg in a twisted position. He was fully invested in the part for the entire 3+ hours, & I was close enough to see the sweat. He let the audience partake in Richard's pleasure at being evil but never let us like him.

The Bridge Project brings together American & British actors, so the cast spoke in a variety of accents. I liked Chuk Iwuji as a cool & capable Buckingham. He communicates the text clearly & is also very funny. Haydn Gwynne was a dignified Elizabeth & spoke urgently. Gemma Jones had a classical delivery, & her Margaret was like a supernatural presence. The casting of 2 women as the young princes worked well.

The cast is in modern dress, & the action takes place on a bare wooden floor surrounded by a wall of doors. There are blackouts & projected titles between scenes, starting with the word "NOW" for the opening. The scene where Richard appears between 2 bishops is comically staged with Richard appearing on a giant video screen, as though caught by a hidden camera. The cries of the citizens come from the back of the auditorium, as if the audience is entreating Richard. I also liked the black humor of the nobles greeting the young Prince Edward with balloons.

The cast was a well-drilled army, & the show's pace never lingered. There was live percussion music, sometimes by the actors on stage, who drummed with excellent synchrony. The audience stayed focused the entire time, excited to see Mr. Spacey, & they gave him a standing ovation. The Curran Theatre was of course packed, & I felt like I was in a crowded elevator the whole evening.

§ Richard III
William Shakespeare

The Bridge Project
Director, Sam Mendes

CAST
Maureen Anderman
Stephen Lee Anderson
Jeremy Bobb
Nathan Darrow
Jack Ellis
Haydn Gwynne
Chuk Iwuji
Isaiah Johnson
Gemma Jones
Andrew Long
Katherine Manners
Howard W Overshown
Simon Lee Phillips
Gary Powell
Michael Rudko
Annabel Scholey
Kevin Spacey
Gavin Stenhouse
Hannah Stokely
Chandler Williams

25 October 2011, 7:30p
Curran Theatre

BluePrint: North and South

2011-10-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

BluePrint, the new music series at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, began its 10th season Saturday night with an ambitious & entertaining program. Mezzo Julienne Walker was soloist for John Harbison's North and South, a song cycle on poems by Elizabeth Bishop. The songs, accompanied by a septet of strings & woodwinds, depict a woman suffering in love. The music is picturesque & often bluesy. Ms. Walker has a bright voice & a natural, easy sound, as well as a relaxed manner on stage. She dedicated her performance to her mother, in recognition of her 65th birthday.

Violinst Axel Strauss was soloist in Concertino for Solo Violin & Small Ensemble by local composer Kurt Rohde. The 20 minute piece is modeled after a Baroque concerto & uses an ensemble of 8 strings, woodwinds & percussion. Everyone seems to have very independent lines, & the 2 percussionists were kept busy going back & forth between their instruments. Mr. Strauss has a thick, unbroken sound, & his playing is both gutsy & smooth. He executed a fiendish all-pizzicato cadenza with ease, & his long double-stops in the 2nd movement were beautifully even. The rapid-fire 3rd movement was exciting & ended abruptly in mid-air, at which point all the musicians were smiling. Maestra Nicole Paiement was a precise & joyful conductor throughout. Mr. Rohde was present & came on-stage to take a bow with the performers.

Shulhoff's Concerto for Piano required a percussion-heavy orchestra of about 40. The 20 minute piece feels both romantic & modern & is instantly accessible. There's an eerie chromatic theme, frequent changes of mood & a noisy, jazz-inspired climax. I liked hearing the siren, which made me think of Antheil's Ballet Mécanique. Pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi displayed fast fingers & a calm demeanor & was a clear audience favorite.

The program ended with brief excerpts from Harbison's opera version of The Great Gatsby. We heard a fast journey by car, real car horn included, & then a tense lovers' fight between mezzo Erin Neff & baritone Bojan Knezevik. Ms. Neff even threw herself to the floor at the end of the scene. This was but to whet our appetite for Ensemble Parallèle's production coming next February. It already looks dramatic.

§ BluePrint | North and South
Nicole Paiement, artistic director & conductor
New Music Ensemble

John Harbison: North and South
Julienne Walker, mezzo-soprano

Kurt Rohde: Concertino for Solo Violin & Small Ensemble (2010)
Axel Strauss, violin

Erwin Schulhoff: Concerto for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 43
Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano

Harbison: Excerpts from The Great Gatsby
Chamber orchestration by Jacques Desjardins
Myrtle: Erin Neff, mezzo-soprano
Wilson: Bojan Knezevik, baritone

October 22, 2011 8:00 p.m.
Concert Hall, San Francisco Conservatory of Music

Opera Kid

2011-10-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

Opera Kid
Nine-year-old Aiden Sagerman likes opera, and he's not kidding.

Opera houses aren't made for children. When I went to "Dido and Anneas" and "La Vida Breve" the seats were too low for me. I had to sit on my knees for two whole hours.

Conlon Leads Verdi Requiem

2011-10-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

I was at the SF Symphony's Thursday night performance of the Verdi Requiem led by James Conlon, who is a happy replacement for Fabio Luisi, who cancelled to replace James Levine at the Met. The opening section was beautifully soft, the orchestra & chorus barely above a whisper, yet not sounding feeble. During the Kyrie, the building swayed for several seconds. It was a 3.8 earthquake centered in Berkeley. Fortunately everyone stayed calm, though it was scary to see those plates over the orchestra shaking. I suppose it was an apt lead-in to the spectacular Dies Irae that followed!

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky has a big, metallic sound & a vibrating tension in her voice. She was thrilling & urgent. Mezzo Dolora Zajick was stern & authoritative, the support for her chesty voice seeming to start from the center of the Earth. Bass Ain Anger has a deep, sepulchral sound that was appropriate to the music. Tenor Frank Lopardo's voice sounded odd to me all evening. He sounded distinctly different when he was soft versus loud. Sometimes he seemed to sing falsetto or to squeeze the notes out instead of singing.

Maestro Conlon led without a score, & the performance was controlled & proportioned. The thundering climaxes were loud without being noisy. All the movements were connected, except for a pause after the Dies Irae. I liked the taut Sanctus, with its tight articulation & scherzo-like feeling. Maestro Conlon gave a lot of attention to the cellos, who opened both halves of the performance with nicely unified playing. The bassoons' interjections stood out neatly at the beginning of the Libera me. The chorus sounded secure & soft-edged. They sometimes stood & sometimes sat while singing. Overall, the performance had a smooth flow & a blended sound.

Maestro Conlon tried to prolong the silence at the end of the piece by keeping his arm raised, but someone began the applause almost immediately. The audience gave the performers a standing ovation & cheered the chorus in particular.

§ Verdi's Requiem
San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Ragnar Bohlin, director

Fabio Luisi James Conlon, conductor

Sondra Radvanovsky, soprano
Dolora Zajick, mezzo-soprano
Frank Lopardo, tenor
Ain Anger, bass

Verdi: Requiem

Thu, Oct 20, 2011 8:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

Leah Crocetto at Hotel Rex

2011-10-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

Soprano Leah Crocetto & pianist John Churchwell entered the salon at Hotel Rex with glasses of red wine & toasted one another before beginning their program of opera, art songs & torch songs. Ms. Crocetto told us this was her 1st time performing with Mr. Churchwell, so "We just want to have fun tonight." Ms. Crocetto's voice is robust, with real body & weight, though she was careful not to blast us in that small room. Her Non mi dir from Don Giovanni was strong, clean & even. She sustained a mood of anguish & yearning in her set of Rachmaninoff songs in Russian & easily plucked a high note out of thin air in How Fair This Spot. In Strauss's Cäcilie, her voice seemed to push against the walls of the room. She ended Liszt's O Quand Je Dors with a beautifully hushed & suspended note & made Pace non trovo feel like an operatic scene.

Ms. Crocetto threw in 2 colorful songs in Spanish not listed on the program, one of which included her convincing imitation of a mosquito. In homage to her previous life as a night club singer in New York, she ended with a set of torch songs. She changed singing styles completely & did not simply sound like an opera singer in a different kind of repertoire. With Every Breath I Take & Cry Me a River made me feel I was in one of those New York night spots, weeping into my scotch. Mr. Churchwell was also equally at home in both styles, & I liked his involved accompaniment. He has an unusual way of playing with very flat hands, & he breathes heavily with the music.

Ms. Crocetto has a warm personality, & she introduced each song for us, sometimes adding personal stories, all in a light way. Looking out at the audience, she told us she recognized many "repeat offenders," & halfway through she paused to ask, "Is everyone doing ok?" After the 75 minute performance, the audience formed a reception line, & Ms. Crocetto delightedly greeted her fans with thank-yous & hugs.

§ Salon at the Rex
San Francisco Performances

Leah Crocetto, soprano
John Churchwell, piano

Mozart: "Crudele? Ah, no mio bene!... Non mi dir" from Don Giovanni

Rachmaninoff:
        Oh, Never Sing to Me Again
        How Fair This Spot
        Loneliness

R. Strauss:
        Die Nacht
        Cäcilie

Lizst:
        O Quand Je Dors
        Pace non trovo
        from Tre Sonetti del Patrarca

2 Songs in Spanish (Not listed in the program)

Fain & Kahal: I'll be Seeing You
Coleman: With Every Breath I Take
Hamilton: Cry Me a River
Tesori: Girl in 14G

6:30pm, Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Hotel Rex

Apple Store Closed for Steve Jobs

2011-10-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

A white curtain closed off the Apple Store on Chestnut Street this morning during the Steve Jobs memorial service for Apple employees. 2 reporters with TV cameras were stationed outside. Apple employees were presumably watching video of the memorial service inside.

Andrew Haigh's Weekend

2011-10-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I caught a matinee of Andrew Haigh's Weekend. This small film, shot in Notthingham, England, follows an extended one-night stand between 2 seemingly mismatched 20-somethings. Tom Cullen is hopelessly adorable as Russell, a stoner jock with a funky apartment filled with second hand store furnishings. Chris New is a prickly hipster, guarding his vulnerability & attraction to Russell. The actors' chemistry is frighteningly convincing & their reactions to one another always look completely spontaneous. Their relationship is a series of drug & alcohol fueled conversations punctuated with sex, & we are not encouraged to think this can go anywhere. However, the story has a beautifully prepared-for ending which is sweet & romantic & took me totally by surprise. I also liked the realistic domestic scenes depicting the friends who function as Russell's family & who turn out to be far less peripheral than he thinks. The movie is attractively photographed, sometimes with a narrow range of focus, & Nottingham has a stark beauty in the pale light of early winter.

§ Weekend
UK, 2011 - 96 mins
Andrew Haigh, dir

§ Movie still: Quinnford & Scout

SFO: Don Giovanni

2011-10-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was at opening night of SF Opera's new production of Don Giovanni. Conductor Nicola Luisotti began the overture forcefully, as if conducting a Beethoven symphony. The performance went at a brisk, non-stop pace, at the sacrifice of some precision. Maestro Luisotti accompanied some of the recitatives on the fortepiano & interpolated the heavenly opening of Mozart's A major piano concerto before the graveyard scene. I was totally disappointed that the final sextet has been cut from these performances, though.

The cast is youthful & lively. Bass Marco Vinco as Leporello has a dark, weighty sound & acted with a comic looseness. I did not get the drift of Lucas Meachem's Don Giovanni, who looked detached in his black circular sunglasses & seemed remorseful as he lay over the body of the dying Commendatore. I like Mr. Meachem's smooth, suave voice, & his serenade "Deh vieni alla finestra" was pretty. He sang it directly to the audience while the house lights went up.

Bass Morris Robinson has a deep, solid voice & was a terrifying Commendatore. His vivid singing made me think I understood Italian perfectly. He was also impressively immobile in the graveyard scene. Mezzo Kate Lindsey was a bright-voiced, intelligent & funny Zerlina. She made a startling entrance doing a cartwheel. Bass-baritone Ryan Kuster as her Masetto has a deep, virile voice & was not completely oafish. Tenor Shawn Mathey was a last-minute cast replacement & seemed nervous, though his voice sounded fine, & he made it through his 2 arias ably. Ellie Dehn as Donna Anna & Serena Farnocchia as Donna Elvira were both strong, hearty singers.

The stage was a vast empty space, with minimal sense of setting, besides a bunch of 18th century chairs. Much of the time the singers were directly under the proscenium. Tall mirrors suspended from the flys moved up & down with an eerie silence to indicate scene changes but otherwise did not contribute to the action. The Don & Donna Anna appear as lovers in the 1st scene, which makes Donna Anna into a nasty liar in her subsequent scenes with Don Ottavio. The masqueraders wore ridiculously over-sized wigs that could have come from Beach Blanket Babylon. The end of act 1, with the chorus as a group chasing the Don & Leporello, looked like a Benny Hill sketch.

As when I attended Lucrezia, I started out in standing room but then received excellent orchestra seats from a patron leaving after act 1. However, my opera companion was clearly happier in standing room.

§ Don Giovanni
San Francisco Opera

Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
Director: Gabriele Lavia

Leporello: Marco Vinco
Donna Anna: Ellie Dehn
Don Giovanni: Lucas Meachem
The Commendatore: Morris Robinson
Don Ottavio: Topi Lehitpuu Shawn Mathey
Donna Elvira: Serena Farnocchia
Zerlina: Kate Lindsey
Masetto: Ryan Kuster

Sat 10/15/11 8:00pm
War Memorial Opera House

§ Production photo: Cory Weaver

Book Arts Jam 2011

2011-10-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I made a field trip to Los Altos to check out the Book Arts Jam at Foothill College. It's an expo of book arts put on by the volunteer Bay Area Book Artists organization. The friendly exhibitors almost always want you to handle their creations, which can be made of almost anything. I saw books made of sailboat sails, computer motherboards, cardboard coffee sleeves, & even other books. The level of artistry can be very high. A gorgeous volume from Artichoke Press contains photographic images printed onto both sides of nearly transparent tissue paper. Judith Hoffman displayed a delightful pinhole camera shaped like a dinosaur which she used to photograph other dinosaurs, of course. There seems to be a growing interest in book arts, & more than one of the exhibitors expressed the opinion that as the book is becoming obsolete, it is turning into more of an art form.

§ Book Arts Jam 2011
Saturday, October 15, 10 am - 4 pm
Foothill College, Los Altos

Lara Downes at Salle Pianos

2011-10-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

The small, funky space of Salle Pianos was already closely packed when I arrived for pianist Lara Downes's CD release party, & I would not have had a seat at all if a few extra folding chairs had not been brought out at the last minute. The evening was also a benefit for Classical Revolution, who organized the event.

13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg is composite piece in which 13 composers in each contributed an "extra" variation to Bach's Goldberg Variations. Ms. Downes began by playing the original Aria then paused between every one to two variations to talk about the music. Her playing is direct, though introspective, & she gets very absorbed in the music, often lingering slightly over phrases.

Ms. Downes described the suite as an arc, moving away from the Aria then back again, but none of the composers strayed too far from the original. Fred Lerdah's pointillist Chasing Goldberg sounds like 2 pianists playing out of sync. I liked Ms. Downes's affectionate playing of Fred Hersch's song-like Melancholy Minuet. Derek Bermenl's Kontraphunktus builds to a noisy climax, while Ryan Brown's Ornament variation stays in the top 2 octaves of the piano. The final variation by Ralf Gothóni is a fun, over-the-top, over-ornamented mash-up.

The entire performance lasted about an hour, & the appreciative audience applauded each break. Ms. Downes played a 1933 Bösendorfer & read the music off an iPad. The crowd was an unusual mix of older & younger people. The old lady in front of me demanded that I not point my cell phone at her, as she is afraid of cell phones, & she eyed me suspiciously even after I stowed the phone in my bag. Wine was available, but serving it was a difficult task for the 2 ladies at the door. After the music, the audience lined up for a pasta & salad dinner. Several of the younger audience members showed up with instrument cases. They were members of Classical Revolution, who were playing there later in the evening.

§ Lara Downes, piano

13 WAYS of Looking at the Goldberg‏
Composers:
J.S. Bach
Fred Lerdahl
Jennifer Higdon
Bright Sheng
Lukas Foss
Derek Bermel
Fred Hersch
C. Curtis-Smith
Stanley Walden
Ryan Brown
Mischa Zupko
David del Tredici
William Bolcom
Ralf Gothóni

Encore: Dave Brubeck, Chorale

October 14, 2011 7p
Salle Pianos

Stephanie Blythe Sings American Songs

2011-10-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

The Herbst Theatre audience gave mezzo Stephanie Blythe extended applause when she appeared on stage for this recital of American songs. Ms. Blythe began by explaining that when she sings in English she does not distribute printed texts. She works hard to communicate the words & wants to see the audiences' faces, not the tops of their heads as they read the program. To familiarize us with the texts of James Legg's Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, she & accompanist Warren Jones took turns reciting the poems, temporarily turning the concert into a high school English class.

Ms. Blythe has no problems communicating the text while singing. Her voice is thrilling & martial, & I felt it bodily as much as heard it. She never sings softly, & no matter how much sound she made, I always felt she was actually holding back. Mr. Jones was an active accompanist & stated his musical ideas boldly. Legg's songs are compact & range from meditative to plaintive to angry. I found them a bit precious, & many of them end with a drawn-out silence.

Ms. Blythe broke the mood before starting into Barber's Three Songs, Op. 10. Noting how hot it is was, she declared, "I'm sweating my bazooms off!" She then told a slightly improper anecdote about the James Joyce Chamber Music poems about to be sung. She & Mr. Jones again recited the poems before performing. They communicated the story of anguished love clearly, & Ms. Blythe's powerhouse sound was especially suited to the war-like & raging "I Hear an Army."

The 2nd half of the program was all about having fun. Mr. Jones started us off with a jaunty Scott Joplin rag, then Ms. Blythe sang 2 sets of Tin Pan Alley songs, making each song a little vaudeville routine. She strutted onto the stage during the introduction to "Coax Me," & she sang it with a few growls & just the right amount of naughtiness. "What'll I do?" gave us her quietest singing of the evening. She stormed off the stage in hurt & anger at the end of "After You've Gone" & sang the hymn "How Can I Keep from Singing?" as an a cappella encore.

§ San Francisco Performances Vocal Series
Stephanie Blythe, mezzo-soprano
Warren Jones, piano

JAMES LEGG: Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson
SAMUEL BARBER: Three Songs, Op. 10

Songs from Tin Pan Alley
JOPLIN: Peacherine Rag
STERLING & VON TILZER: Coax Me
HERBERT & MacDONOUGH: Ask Her While the Band is Playing
HENDERSON, BROWN & DeSYLVA: If I had a Talking Picture of You
CREAMER & LAYTON: After You've Gone
JOPLIN: Magnetic Rag
BERLIN: If you Don't Want my Peaches
You'd be Surprised
What'll I Do?
I Love a Piano

Encores:
JOPLIN: Maple Leaf Rag
LOWRY: How Can I Keep from Singing?
FOSTER: Beautiful Dreamer

Thursday, October 13
8pm
Herbst Theatre

iPhone 4S Release

2011-10-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

At 10am this morning, this line for the Chestnut Street Apple store ran around the block. There was even a policeman posted in front of the shop. The people in line were patient, & many of them whiled away the time on their current iPhones.

Bachelor Days Are Over

2011-10-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

This morning I got to see a preview of Katia Lewkowicz's Bachelor Days Are Over, the opening night film for the San Francisco Film Society's up-coming French Cinema Now. We incessantly follow an unnamed, but obviously cool, 30-something Parisian (Benjamin Biolay) though the 4 hectic days leading up to his wedding. He is defiantly passive in the face of stress-filled demands put upon him by his family, friends, fiancée & an attractive girl he has just met. The bride is unaccountably missing in action, & from the start the marriage looks like a bad idea. There is no real plot, so the interest lies in seeing the characters & relationships unfold. The situations are both frustrating & humorous, & I was kept in doubt as to whether the wedding would actually occur. The film's cool, light blue palette is attractive, & I liked the ensemble casts' convincingly naturalistic performances, especially Emmanuelle Devos as the permanently grimacing sister & Nicole Garcia as the excitable mother. Director Katia Lewkowicz is expected to attend the opening night.

§ Bachelor Days Are Over (Pourquoi Tu Pleures?)
Director: Katia Lewkowicz
France 2011, 99 min

October 27, 6:15 pm (Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema)
October 30, 9:00 pm (Film Society | New People Cinema)

§ French Cinema Now
October 27–November 2, 2011
SF Film Society | New People Cinema
Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema

Browse the films in the festival
Download the program (pdf)
Buy Tickets

Autodesk Gallery

2011-10-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited the Autodesk Gallery on the 2nd floor of One Market. It seems to be a showroom for presentations to clients, but it is open to the public on Wednesday afternoons. Its purpose is to publicize all the places Autodesk software is used, from computer animation to a Szechuan earthquake reconstruction project.

Of course there are a lot of architecture & transportation displays, like this organic-looking concept vehicle.

Impossible not to love the 8-foot Lego dinosaur. It even comes with a series of dioramas, also made of Legos, depicting its design & construction. Dismayingly, the actual assembly was outsourced to the Czech Republic.

One side is cut away, exposing the steel armature required to support it.

Here you can drive through a simulation of the completed Doyle Drive replacement.

This array of cameras will create your 3-D headshot. Frustratingly, the resulting 3-D model can only be viewed on an iPhone or iPad, so I have yet to see mine.

I joined a guided tour that started when I arrived, but the exhibits are self-explanatory, & I would have absorbed just as much on my own.

§ Autodesk Gallery at One Market
One Market, Floor 2
The Autodesk Gallery is open to the public every Wednesday from 12-5 p.m, with a guided tour from 12:30-1:30 p.m.

Yefim Bronfman at Cal

2011-10-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

The stage at Zellerbach was so dark that it took a moment to notice that pianist Yefim Bronfman was walking out. Looking a bit gruff, he bowed a couple of times & quickly sat down to begin the Brahms Sonata Op. 5 before we had fully settled down. His playing was powerful. The opening chords were were full & thick, & the next phrase was contrastingly light but not wispy. The Andante 2nd movement was delicate & consoling, & Bronfman did a wonderfully building crescendo toward the end. The Scherzo sounded a bit angry by comparison. The finale was robust.

Mr. Bronfman was a mighty virtuoso in 3 of Liszt's Transcendetal Etudes. His thundering Mazeppa was a roller coaster ride. I kept thinking of the PDQ Bach gag where the pianist puts on a seat belt. Bronfman used a lot of pedal in the Harmonies du Soir, but he never sounded muddy. He displayed a strong left hand in Chasse-Neige, & he always sounded fluid & made the long melodic lines clear. The audience responded with cheers.

After intermission Mr. Bronfman performed Prokofiev's Sonata No. 8. There is a nice connectedness to his playing, & he always hits all the notes of a chord precisely together. I like the buoyancy with which he plays runs of chords. He gets very involved & sometimes rises off the piano bench emphatically. The 1st movement of the Prokofiev was anguished, & the finale was ferocious. Mr. Bronfman looked like he was grabbing those final chords out of the keyboard & devouring them.

The audience gave Mr. Bronfman a standing ovation, though he looked kind of grumpy throughout the evening. He held the audience's attention fully, & people were quiet even between movements. It was disappointing to look behind me & see the auditorium only half full. For encores, we got 2 Chopin Etudes from Op. 10: a shimmering No. 1 in C major & the stormy No. 12 in C minor. It was a jolt to leave Zellerbach Hall & be greeted by the sound of a blaring Cal marching band in the plaza.

§ Yefim Bronfman, piano
Koret Recital Series
Cal Performances

Brahms: Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
Liszt: Transcendental Etudes (selections)
IV. Mazeppa: Allegro
XI. Harmonies du Soir: Andantino
XII. Chasse-Neige: Andante con moto
Prokofiev: Sonata No. 8 in B-flat major, Op. 84

Encores:
Chopin: Etude No. 1 in C major, Op. 10
Chopin: Etude No. 12 in C minor , Op. 10

Tue, Oct 11, 8 pm
Zellerbach Hall

SF Opera: Lucrezia Borgia

2011-10-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

Though receiving scant encouragement, I attended SF Opera's Lucrezia Borgia on Saturday night. The opera is in 3 short acts, & the music is agreeably melodic though not very memorable. I heard Renée Fleming sing half-voice in the dress rehearsal, but in performance her voice turns out to be not that loud. It is comfy, natural & easy on the ears, though not as mellifluous as one would expect for bel canto. She effortlessly sustained a lovely mezzo-forte note at the end of act 1.

Mezzo Elizabeth DeShong, looking like a 12-year old boy in the pants role of Orsini, demonstrated power in all parts of her range & gave an intensely focused performance. I liked tenor Michael Fabiano's ringing sound & dramatically convincing stage-presence as Lucrezia's unacknowledged son. His costumes expose his well-developed pecs, making him a dishy Gennaro. Bass Vitalij Kowaljow was an intimidating Duke of Ferrara. His voice is solid & dark & his singing nicely connected. Also fine was the posse of male singers, many of them Adlers, playing various courtiers. Conductor Riccardo Frizza made large round gestures, & I thought the orchestra played well, but I wished the music had more punch.

The production has a period Renaissance setting dominated by a broad staircase & high stone walls. Every scene seems to take place outdoors in the middle of the night. I found act 3 to be particularly arbitrary. I don't think it made sense for Gennaro to be making out with his buddy Orsini. Lucrezia enters wearing armor, a cape & a sword, looking like a Renaissance super hero. I also didn't understand why her poisoning victims were carried out, only to be dragged back on stage during the final moments. And Lucrezia's gory suicide felt unprepared for.

My opera companion & I were in standing room at the orchestra level, then lucked out when 2 old ladies gave us their excellent center orchestra seats for act 3. When my companion saw the Borgia's bull statue in act 2, she whispered, "Wall Street." She was also upset when I gave away the "surprise" revelation that Gennaro is Lucrezia's son.

§ Lucrezia Borgia
by Gaetano Donizetti

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: John Pascoe

Apostolo Gazello: Austin Kness
Ascanio Petrucci: Ao Li
Maffio Orsini: Elizabeth DeShong
Jeppo Liverotto: Christopher Jackson
Oloferno Vitellozzo: Brian Jagde
Gubetta: Igor Vieira
Gennaro: Michael Fabiano
Lucrezia Borgia: Renée Fleming
Duke Alfonso: Vitalij Kowaljow
Rustighello: Daniel Montenegro
Jeppo Liverotto: Christopher Jackson
Astolfo: Ryan Kuster
Princess Negroni: Blance Hampton
Ladies of the Court: Mary Finch, Claire Kelm, Sally Mouzon, Sally Monro
A Voice: Jere Torkelsen

Sat 10/8/11 8:00pm
War Memorial Opera House

New Merola Opera Executive Director

2011-10-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

Last week, the Merola Opera Program held a reception in the Opera House to recognize the appointment of Jean Kellogg as their first Executive Director. The event also welcomed Donna Blacker as Merola's new President & honored out-going President Patrick Wilken, who was definitely a bit emotional as he thanked his associates. Karen Ames uncharacteristically stepped out from behind her publicity veil to present Mr. Wilken with a proclamation from the Mayor. Some members of the press were in attendance, including the Opera Tattler, whose bag nearly tripped up Board Chairman Jayne Davis.

Fleet Week 2011

2011-10-09T22:52:00.000-07:00

Fleet Week festivities have been unavoidable for those of us in the Marina. The Blue Angels started rattling windows on Thursday. Besides the airshow, there was a fair on the Marina Green with plenty of family-friendly fun, like these over-sized military vehicles that are like giant toy trucks.

Not sure what this inflatable Marine figure was all about. Navy representatives gave me a free "Property of U.S. Navy" T-shirt, though. Oracle had a presence too. It sponsors one of the stunt planes & has its own big guest tent.

This was part of an inflatable obstacle course for kids to run, slide, crawl, climb & squeeze through.

The crowds rendered Muni unusable, & I was nearly trapped in the neighborhood on Saturday night. To get to a performance at the Opera House, I resorted to walking the whole way. During the half hour I walked on Van Ness from Union Street to McAllister, not one Muni bus passed me.

Erotic Comics

2011-10-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

Friday night I attended the opening of an exhibit of erotic comics at the Center for Sex & Culture. About 40 artists are represented, each by an illustration or a page from a comic. The artworks are arrayed in a tightly-packed row across a long wall. Homosexuality seems to be the baseline, & things get more baroque from there. There are no labels on the wall, but there is a data sheet listing the artists. Still, I probably needed more context. One comic attempts to explain how one may be both asexual & bisexual. I had no idea how to react to Rick Worley's story featuring a cartoony, marshmallow-shaped bunny rabbit & his twink sex partner. Later in the evening I discovered I was talking with Mr. Worley, whose conversation encompassed the X-Files, Klingon dictionaries & love poems in Elvish.

The CSC threw a good party. There was wine & beer, & I was offered a fresh-tasting bruschetta appetizer from a circulating platter. People kept arriving throughout the event, & the atmosphere was very sociable. Most of the attendees were the artists & their friends, & I kept getting asked whether I was an artist, but, alas, I am not.

§ Dirty Comics: An exhibition of erotic comic art
Curated by Jon Macy
Opening Reception
Friday, October 07, 2011, 06:00pm - 09:00pm
Center for Sex and Culture

Salon at the Rex: Adam Schulman Trio

2011-10-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

The fall season of the intimate Salons at the Rex opened with the Adam Schulman Trio performing a set inspired by the Nat King Cole Trio. Pianist Mr. Schulman joked at the start, "I'm not going to sing." Instead, the trio paid homage to Nat King Cole as a pianist. They evoked the cool side of the 1950s so easily that after the opening song I regretted not sitting down with a martini. Jack Riordan was laid-back on the amplified guitar, even when executing rapid runs. It feels like Mr. Schulman plays just the right number of notes, whether doing a solo or accompanying. John Wiitala looks very happy on the bass & seems to flick the notes out of his instrument.

As is usual at these events, the music lasted for about an hour, & there was a short Q & A afterward. The audience was relaxed & absorbed, though a woman across the room from me texted throughout the music. I could hear the clicks on the virtual keyboard of her iPhone.

Due to up-coming construction at the Rex, next year the salon series will relocate to a penthouse-like room on the 16th floor of the Hotel Adagio. Even though the hotel's lounge is far away on the ground floor, I was assured that there would be a bar in the room for the performances.

§ Adam Schulman Trio
Salons at the Rex

Adam Shulman, piano
Jack Riordan, guitar
John Wiitala, bass

Will You Still be Mine?
Straighten Up & Fly Right
Moon Ray
Somebody Loves Me
After You've Gone
Don't Blame Me
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby
I Didn't Know What Time it Was

Wednesday, October 5
6:30 pm
Hotel Rex

Flowers for Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

On my way to the Salon at the Rex this afternoon, I had to navigate through a mob in front of Union Square Apple store. I saw reporters & assumed it was something to do with the new iPhone. It was only until I got home later that I discovered that Steve Jobs had passed away. These 2 bouquets of flowers were left in front of the Apple store on Chestnut Street in my neighborhood. There can't be many corporate CEOs who deaths spark a public outpouring of grief.

Schulz Sketches From Abroad

2011-10-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Though thwarted by ridiculous rush-hour traffic earlier in the week, I was determined to see these travel sketches by Charles Schulz at his museum in Santa Rosa. I made it on Sunday, the last day of the exhibit. On view are 14 landscapes & travel scenes made by Mr. Schulz while on vacation in France, Yosemite & England. They are realistic & observational in a way that the Peanuts is not, yet the comic strip characters would not look completely out of place in them. Mr. Schulz used relatively crude tools, such as marker pens & crayons, & the pictures were never meant for display. The pleasure in making them is evident, even if 3 watercolors made in 1991 have actually been neatly torn into quarters. These were discarded by Mr. Schulz but salvaged & re-assembled by his wife Jean.

The museum also currently has a show of Pop Art works inspired directly by the comics. It was a nice bonus to see a strangely poignant Superman by Mel Ramos & a sparkly portrait of Mickey Mouse by Andy Warhol. The museum is staffed by eager & elderly volunteers who make it a point to converse with every visitor.

§ A Change of Scene: Schulz Sketches From Abroad
June 8 to October 2, 2011

Pop'd From the Panel
June 25 to December 11, 2011

Charles M. Schulz Museum

APE 2011

2011-10-04T00:38:00.000-07:00

I spent my Saturday at the Alternative Press Expo, a celebration of independent comics, print & the hand-made. Every year the artwork gets slicker & more well-crafted. Big draws this year were appearances by Kate Beaton, Daniel Clowes, Chris Thompson, Adrian Tomine & Shannon Wheeler. Fans lined up in front of various tables throughout the day for signings. I witnessed Mr. Thompson assiduously drawing a portrait of the heroine of Habibi in each book he signed.

Artist Ray Sumser asked passers-by to name their favorite cartoon character, then he pointed it out somewhere in his Comicosm, a 6'x9' painting crowded with 1,500 iconic characters. Los Angeles-based cartoonist Jeff Krell is on a mission to bring the hilariously raunchy work of German cartoonist Ralf König to an American audience. Many of the local creators I had seen at Zine Fest last month were here, including the endearing Jason Martin & the bluff Geoff Vasile, whose old-school attitude belies his youth. I was also accosted most personably by Justin Hall, whose Queer Cartoonists Panel is now a fixture of APE. I later heard another panel discussion in which all the creators dismissed art school as a scam.

This year the expo provided a free shuttle service from Cal Train & BART, but the schedule was infrequent & had an unaccountable gap in the middle of the afternoon. I walked from the Westfield Mall to the expo in about 20 minutes, which was quicker than waiting for the shuttle.

§ APE | Alternative Press Expo 2011
Concourse Exibition Center, San Francisco
October 1 -2

MTT conducts Mozart, Adès, and Stravinsky

2011-10-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

On Friday I heard my 1st San Francisco Symphony concert of the season. This was at the kind invitation of John Marcher, who himself arrived direct from an afternoon at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The program opened with Mozart's Haffner Symphony. There was a large string section, & the orchestra played with a full, rich sound & tight ensemble, though the interpretation was a bit blunt. I heard an unchararcteristic squawk from the woodwind section in the Presto.

A long screen divided into 3 frames was lowered over the orchestra for Thomas Adès's Polaris. The huge orchestra included 2 harps, & the brasses were arrayed in 5 groups around the terrace. The piece opens with a flurry of notes from the piano but soon involves the entire orchestra. The brass players always seem to enter in sequence, from highest to lowest, & it was fun to hear some extremely low notes from the tuba. There were also piercingly high pitches on the violins & piccolos. The piece is atmospheric & evoked tides & the sea for me. It builds to a dark climax near the end, & its 15 minutes felt short. The accompanying video triptych depicted stars, circular openings & 2 women grappling with seaweed on a rocky beach. It looked like we were watching the same movie started at different times on each screen. Mr. Adès & filmmaker Tal Rosner appeared on stage for the ovations. The poor 1st stand violinist dropped her bow when she stood up to shake hands with MTT. I hope her bow was not damaged.

Every section of the orchestra played out for Petrushka. The principals punched out their solos, making the piece into a concerto for orchestra. Ensemble was tight, & the orchestra made a brash sound. As a bonus, MTT gave us Stavinsky's toe-tapping Scherzo à la Russe. On the last note the entire orchestra stood & faced us triumphantly, a maneuver executed with startling synchronization.

§ MTT conducts Mozart, Adès, and Stravinsky
San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Tal Rosner, video artist

MOZART: Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385, Haffner
ADÈS: Polaris: Voyage for Orchestra (with film by Tals Rosner) (2010)
STRAVINSKY: Petrushka (1947 Version)

Encore:
STRAVINSKY: Scherzo à la Russe

Fri, Sep 30, 2011 8:00pm
Davies Symphony Hall

Craig Thompson Presents Habibi

2011-09-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

Last night a capacity audience came to the Cartoon Art Museum to hear Craig Thompson talk about his just-released graphic novel Habibi. It's a fantasy tale, nearly 700 pages long, & its sources include the history of the Arab slave trade, One Thousand and One Nights, the water crisis, Arabic calligraphy, & the poets Rumi & Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. I feel chastised simply by its length. The trim Mr. Thompson thanked us for waiting 7 years since his last book, & he eagerly gave a half-hour talk with slides about the process of creating his new story. We saw pictures of his sketchbooks & the 200 page 1st draft drawn with a pen. His drawing is fluid & alarmingly free of corrections & reworked lines.

We learned that he began the final art even before he had an ending, assuming that a suitable one would present itself. Unfortunately this did not happen, & he tried at least 10 endings before settling on the most "honest" one. He talked about the importance of finishing things, & asserted that the purpose of a relationship is to bring out your insecurities. If you abandon a relationship after the 1st signs of struggle, you will never learn anything.

The audience was a young, arty crowd, & they were patient when the talk started 20 minutes late due to a missing cable for the projector. Afterward, Mr. Thompson did a signing, but the museum sold out of books even before the event started. Incredibly, Habibi was released in 7 editions in 7 different languages on the exact same day, so Mr. Thompson is at the start of a lengthy international book tour. He amusingly kept referring to his French publisher as "The Frenchies." He'll be at APE this weekend, & it might be worth getting a copy from him, as it looked like he drew something in each book when signing it.

§ Craig Thompson Presents Habibi
Cartoon Art Museum
Wednesday, September 28, 2011, 7:00-9:00pm

Dutch and Flemish Masterworks; The Mourners

2011-09-29T00:05:00.001-07:00

The exhibit of 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings at the Legion of Honor closes this weekend, & I visited this afternoon, determined not to miss it. The paintings all come from the private collection of the Van Otterlo family & include examples of various popular genres, such as seascapes, church & city views, still life, portraits & allegories. Since the paintings are on the smaller side & quite detailed, everyone needs to get their noses up close, creating jams in front of the pictures. Most of these artists were unfamiliar to me, but the exacting "pen painting" of a war ship by Willem van de Velde the Elder drew a lot of admiration from visitors, as did the still lifes. Rembrandt is representing by a piercing Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh & an amazing etching of a Sleeping Puppy. It's the size of 3 stage stamps but carefully & affetionately observed. There's also a vivid Portrait of a Preacher by Hals & 2 large Van Ruysdael landscapes. The final room of "Dutch Italiante Painting" depicts sunny climes but left me cold.

I also saw The Mourners, a striking exhibit of 37 alabaster statues from the 15th century tomb of John the Fearless, 2nd duke of Burgundy. The statues are about a foot high, & at 1st they looked to me like the pieces of a giant Medieval chess set. Each has a unique presence. They are robed, & the most evocative figures are completely hooded. They normally live in their own miniature aracade, walking in an eternal funeral procession for the duke, but here they stand in the open, so we can admire them from all sides.

§ Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection
Legion of Honor
July 9, 2011 - October 2, 2011

§ The Mourners: Tomb Sculptures from the Court of Burgundy
Legion of Honor
August 20, 2011 - December 31, 2011

1493

2011-09-28T00:54:00.000-07:00

Tuesday evening I was at the Mechanics' Institute to hear science writer Charles C. Mann give an illustrated talk about his new book, 1493. This account of the unintended consequences of Columbus's voyage to America weaves together science, history & ecology. The European exploitation of the Americas created a truly global economy & an exchange of people, plants &, most importantly, diseases. It was shocking to learn that two-thirds to 90 percent of the Native American population was wiped out due to the introduction of epidemic diseases, & there is a probable connection between this event & the Little Ice Age. Besides tying together a vast amount of knowledge, Mr. Mann also displayed a dry wit, as when he referred to an image of a Native American dwelling hung with animals skins as "Sara Palin's dream house."

The meeting room was full, & people who did not RSVP were put on a waiting list, though I think everyone got in. Refreshments were available, though sadly a sign said that wine could not be offered at these events which are open to the public.

§ 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created - Charles C. Mann
Mechanics' Institute
Tue, 09/27/2011 - 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Apple Store Shroud

2011-09-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

While the Apple store on Chestnut Street is being renovated, it's been covered with this featureless black facade. Even the floating Apple logo is hidden. I saw workers put this up last night, & when I walked by again at 9pm this evening I could hear Apple construction elves busily at work inside. Actually, I think the building is in mourning for Steve Jobs.

SF Shakes: Cymbeline

2011-09-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon I saw the closing performance of Cymbeline, performed outdoors in the Presidio by Free Shakespeare in the Park. The production has a Steampunk look, with the cast in Victorian clothing & a soothsayer wearing goggles. The stage is strewn with trunks & furniture from a child's nursery. A mute little girl pops up a few times, & the 1st scene is staged as a story being read to her.

The dedicated cast of 9 did a lot of doubling & tripling up on roles. Casting Craig Marker as both Posthumus & Cloten works so well that the actor can switch parts without leaving the stage. His clownish Cloten hasn't quite learned to walk on 2 legs. Caitlyn Louchard is cast convincingly as the boy servant Pisanio. Emily Jordan gave a consistently solid performance as an angry Innogen. She provided a strong anchor for this somewhat unfocussed play. I liked how actor Julian López-Morillas communicates the text so plainly. The production, perhaps reflecting the play, had an uncertain tone. There was an enjoyably grotesque moment, though, when Cloten waved his sword menacingly at us to the accompaniment of the Tiger Lillies's "Kill You on a Monday."

The SF Shakes audience sat patiently through the nearly 3 hour show, applauded the ends of scenes, laughed freely, & hissed at one of Iachimo's exits. The cast uses wireless head mics, but the amplification frequently cut in & out. An announcement was made that this weekend's performances were dedicated to SF Shakes CFO & Board Member Keith Taylor, who "died in a senseless car crash" earlier in the week.

§ Cymbeline
Free Shakespeare in the Park
Directed by Kenneth Kelleher

Chris Ayles (Cymbeline / Cornelius / Sicilius / Jailor)
Craig Marker (Posthumus / Cloten)
Emily Jordan (Innogen)
Sharon Robinson (Queen / Soothsayer / Jailor)
Caitlyn Louchard (Pisanio)
Galen Murphy-Hoffman (Iachimo)
Julian López-Morillas (Philario / Belarius / Jupiter)
Michael Bates (1st Gentleman / Guiderius / Caius Lucius)
Carl Holvick-Thomas (2nd Gentleman / Arviragus / Frenchman)

The Presidio's Main Post, Parade Ground Lawn
Sunday, Sept 25 at 2:30 PM

NCCO: Carmen Revisited

2011-09-25T23:02:00.000-07:00

The New Century Chamber Orchestra opened their 20th anniversary season with this splashy, audience-pleasing program. The ensemble dug into Bloch's Baroque-inspired Concert Grosso with enthusiasm. The first stand players looked at each other often, clearly enjoying the piece. There was a nice solo from viola principal Anna Kruger, & the viola section played tightly together in the fugue. The piano sat behind the orchestra, & I sometimes forgot to listen for it, even though I really liked pianist Miles Graber's limpid playing. The audience cheered the energetic performance.

NCCO honored Stuart Canin, their founding music director, by inviting him to play Mendelssohn's "other" violin concerto in D minor. I think I've only ever heard it once before, & it is appealing & happy music. Mr. Canin has a sweet string sound, & his fluid bow arm is lovely to watch, though his playing was a bit wobbly at times. The orchestra were supportive in their accompaniment & played with bite. They appreciatively stamped their feet for Mr. Canin.

The orchestra returned from intermission having added bright red accessories to their concert dress for Shchedrin's Carmen Suite. Bassist Tony Manzo looked like a Christmas present, with a big red bow tied to the scroll of his instrument. Shchedrin uses well-known themes from Carmen (& 2 other Bizet works), but he is wry & surprising, as when a timpani thud ends the act III Entr'acte or the marimbas play the March of the Toreadors. The orchestra's crescendo in the 1st movement was impressively tense & drawn-out. They played raucously. Leader Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg, though seated, became airborne at least twice. Percussionists Galen Lemmon & Artie Storch, manning a vast array of instruments behind the orchestra, were continually on the move. They must wear out a pair of shoes each performance. The piece ends quietly, & there was a lingering silence before the audience responded with a loud standing ovation.

§ Carmen Revisited
New Century Chamber Orchestra

Ernest Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1 with Piano Obbligato
Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in D Minor
Stuart Canin, violin
Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Suite

Saturday, September 24, 2011, 8pm
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco

§ Members of New Century
Violin I:
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Music Director and Concertmaster
Karen Shinozaki Sor
Iris Stone
Robin Mayforth
Sara Usher

Violin II:
Candace Guirao
Deborah Tien Price
Michael Yokas
Anna Presler
Michelle Maruyama

Violas:
Anna Kruger
Cassandra Lynne Richburg
Kurt Rohde
Jenny Douglass

Cello:
Michelle Djokic
Robin Bonnell
Michael Graham
Erin Wang

Bass:
Anthony Manzo

Piano:
Miles Graber

Percussion:
Galen Lemmon
Artie Storch

Roadworks Street Fair

2011-09-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

It's pretty hard to miss the photo ops provided by this street fair & fund-raiser for the San Francisco Center for the Book. Spectacularly large lino prints are inked & then laid in the street, where they are printed with an actual steam roller.

This image by Eric Rewitzer of Godzilla attacking the Pyramid Building was a crowd-pleaser.

Looking back at my pictures, I am reminded that dogs & popsicles were popular accessories at the event. The weather was capricious on Saturday, & vendors periodically had to stop their stuff from flying away in the wind. It was fun to run into book artist Ginger Burrell once again. I probably learn 5 new things every time I talk with her.

§ Roadworks Street Fair
San Francisco Center for the Book
09.24.11

Big Book Sale

2011-09-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

It's not reasonable to go into this huge used book sale at Fort Mason looking for a particular item. The books are sorted by subject matter, but basically it is just piles o' books. I loved finding Douglas Coupland's 1990s novel Microserfs filed with books on computer programming. Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population was on a table labelled "Pre-1900 Fiction." Most everything is one or two dollars, but there is also a selection of collectible editions. I was thrilled when one of the staffers allowed me to examine a 1st edition of Harry Houdini's A Magician Among the Spirits. It contains the author's signature on 2 pages & was found in a box of books donated to the library.

§ 47th Annual Big Book Sale
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library
September 21-25, 2011
Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center

Philharmonia Baroque: Mozart & Haydn

2011-09-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Friday night I attended this Philharmonia Baroque concert featuring instrumental works of the classical period. The program began with a detailed & well-prepared performance of Mozart's Prague Symphony. Nicholas McGegan conducts with variety & made the different sections of the piece clear. I liked the way the timbres of the 18th century flutes & trumpets stood out. The timpani, though nearly off-stage, made a great rolling sound, & I felt it as much as heard it. The ending of the Allegro was taut, & the Presto was crisp & built nicely to an energetic finale.

R.J. Kelley was soloist for a pastiche Mozart horn concerto constructed from movements of 2 unfinished concertos plus the slow movement from the 4th concerto. He played a natural horn with no valves, keeping his right hand up the bell while blowing into what looks like a coiled garden hose. It sounds softer & mellower than a modern French horn & seems to be the world's most difficult instrument to play. Mr. Kelley's performance was cautious, but he coaxed hesitant runs, turns & trills out of the thing. He began his cadenza by eerily sounding 2 notes at once. In the pause before the 3rd movement Mr. Kelley sipped water from a plastic bottle, & Maestro McGegan comically mimed giving the horn a drink as well. People seated in my row applauded & stamped their feet enthusiastically for Mr. Kelley.

After intermission we heard an overture by Franz Ignaz Beck, a prolific composer whose works are now almost completely lost. It opens with a gloomy introduction & has contrasting episodes that feel theatrical & are reminiscent of Gluck. The performance ended with a bright & cheerful performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 98. The phrasing was always clear & pointed. Maestro McGegan playfully conducts with his knees & shoulders as well as his hands. Sometimes he flings the music over his head or slaps the orchestra. I like the way he alertly conducts silences. The final presto skipped along, & Maestro McGegan's teasing gestures caused the woman next to me to giggle out loud. McGegan contributed sprightly arpeggios on the fortepiano during the finale.

§ Mozart & Haydn: A Tale of Two Cities
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Nicholas McGegan, conductor
R.J. Kelley, horn

MOZART: Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504
MOZART : Concerto pasticcio for Horn in E-flat major, K. 370b/495/371
BECK: Overture from La mort d’Orphée
HAYDN: Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major

Fri., Sep. 23, 2011, 8 PM
Herbst Theatre, San Francisco

SF Opera: Heart of a Soldier

2011-09-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I saw San Francisco Opera's latest commission, Heart of a Soldier. It's based on James B. Stewart's journalistic biography of Rick Rescorla, a 9/11 hero who died in the World Trade Center. The performance began with the audience singing the Star Spangled Banner while looking at a huge projection of a waving American flag. The hour long 1st act covers 30 years of Mr. Rescorla's life, from his boyhood in Cornwall to his marriage in Dallas. The many characters, scene changes & multi-layered projections felt jammed together. Tenor William Burden makes an airborne entrance as paratrooper Dan Hill, drifting above the stage, Valkyrie-style. Extremely fit mercenaries cavort shirtless in a Rhodesian bar, there's a jungle battle in Vietnam, & a muezzin calls the faithful to prayer in the middle of a wedding scene. Though shorter, act II feels more expansive, covering Mr. Rescorla's middle-age romance with Susan Greer & the attack on the towers. We see Ms. Greer out jogging with a tail-wagging Golden Retriever, & this scene-stealing pooch got a round of applause when he exited chasing a ball. The collapse of the towers is staged powerfully & ends in a respectful near-silence.

The prose libretto by Donna Di Novelli has a lot of conversations but few places where the action stops operatically. The music by Christopher Theofanidis is harmonic yet modern-sounding. The orchestra under conductor Patrick Summers played crisply, especially in the jaunty, syncopated passages. The committed performances of the cast really sold the evening to me. Thomas Hampson's voice is fluffy, warm & without strain, & he was an endearing Rick. Tenor William Burden gave a naturalistic acting performance as Dan Hill, his voice secure, bright & smooth. Soprano Melody Moore as Susan Rescorla was similarly naturalistic & sang urgently & with strength. I also liked soprano Nadine Sierra's clear & youthful sound as a girl called Juliet, sending perfumed letters to her lover in Vietnam. I never felt I had to refer to the supertitles to be sure what she was saying. Bass-baritone Michael Sumuel gave an emotional performance as the recipient of her letters.

The audience seemed engaged by the opera & even laughed out loud at its humorous moments. Several in the orchestra level gave Mr. Hampson a standing ovation. During the intermission I peeked into the pit & was recognized by principal trumpet Adam Luftman. Fortunately he is friendly toward bloggers & confided with amazement, "That Opera Tattler, she goes to everything!"

§ Heart of a Soldier
Music by Christopher Theofanidis
Libretto By Donna Di Novelli
Based On The Book By James B. Stewart And The Life Stories Of Susan Rescorla, Rick Rescorla And Daniel J. Hill
Commissioned By San Francisco Opera

Conductor: Patrick Summers
Director: Francesca Zambello

Rick Rescorla: Thomas Hampson
Daniel J. Hill : William Burden
Susan Rescorla: Melody Moore
Juliet, Barbara: Nadine Sierra
Cyril: Henry Phipps
Imam: Mohannad Mchallah
Tom, Ted: Michael Sumuel
Lolita, Bridesmaid: Susannah Biller
Pat, Ann: Sara Gartland
Kathy, Bridesmaid: Maya Lahyani
Omaha, Robert: Ta'u Pupu'a
Dexter, Dex: Daniel Snyder
Joseph, Joe: Trevor Scheunemann
Sam, Wesley: Wayne Tigges
Buddy: Koa the Golden Retriever

Wed 09/21/11 7:30pm
War Memorial Opera House

Dress Rehearsal: Lucrezia Borgia

2011-09-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday afternoon, thanks to a thoughtful SF Opera super, I saw the 1st two acts of the final dress rehearsal of San Francisco Opera's Lucrezia Borgia. The production opens this Friday night. Since it stars Renée Fleming, there was a great deal of excitement among the rehearsal attendees. Like me, no one seemed to be familiar with the opera itself. I joked that given the subject matter & the composer, people must get poisoned to the accompaniment of a drinking song, & it turns out that this is exactly the case. The poor tenor even gets poisoned twice!

Ms. Fleming sang half-voice in the acts I heard, but tenor Michael Fabiano sounded like he is going to be great. His voice is strong, ringing & masculine, & he has a young & handsome stage presence. Mezzo Elizabeth DeShong has a tightly focussed sound & is a pert Orsini. The role reminded me of the page Oscar from Un Ballo. Bass Vitalij Kowaljow has a big, dark sound, & is intimidating as Lucrezia's abusive husband, the Duke of Ferrara. It was nice to hear that the orchestra's brass & woodwind sections have lost none of their glow from this summer's Ring Cycle.

The production has a Renaissance setting, & some of the costumes have headgear with gold spikey things coming out of them. The set is dominated by a broad staircase & towering stone walls. There seem to be dungeons beneath the stage, & a woman is chased around by a man with a whip in act II. All the scenes are dimly lit, as if everything were happening at night. SFMike was somewhere on stage as a torch-bearer at the end of act I, trying vainly to illuminate the gloom.

§ Lucrezia Borgia
by Gaetano Donizetti

San Francisco Opera
Conductor: Riccardo Frizza
Director: John Pascoe

Apostolo Gazello: Austin Kness
Ascanio Petrucci: Ao Li
Maffio Orsini: Elizabeth DeShong
Jeppo Liverotto: Christopher Jackson
Oloferno Vitellozzo: Brian Jagde
Gubetta: Igor Vieira
Gennaro: Michael Fabiano
Lucrezia Borgia: Renée Fleming
Duke Alfonso: Vitalij Kowaljow
Rustighello: Daniel Montenegro
Jeppo Liverotto: Christopher Jackson
Astolfo: Ryan Kuster
Princess Negroni: Blance Hampton
Ladies of the Court: Mary Finch, Claire Kelm, Sally Mouzon, Sally Monro
A Voice: Jere Torkelsen

Dress Rehearsal
Tuesday 9/20/11 · 3:00 PM
War Memorial Opera House

Up-Coming: New Century Chamber Orchestra

2011-09-21T01:45:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, the New Century Chamber Orchestra had an open rehearsal for the 1st concert of their 20th anniversary season. I sat in on about half an hour & saw them work on Bloch's Concerto Grosso No. 1 for String Orchestra and Piano, which replaces Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste on the originally announced program. The group is conductorless, & there is a lot of starting, stopping & discussion among all the members. Though decisions are generally reached by consensus, I was surprised to see leader Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg veto outright a suggestion from the bassist. Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg is a very physical performer & never goes less than all-out. Sometimes she rose out of her seat while playing. The Bloch piece was new to me, & it is a super-accessible romp that everyone seems to have a great time playing. The Carmina Burana-like program, which also includes the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto & Shchedrin's percussion-heavy Carmen Suite, should delight NCCO's audience.

Following the rehearsal I was present at a press conference with Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg, who was unstinting in her praise of the ensemble's performances & proud of its continued success, despite the hard times that have affected other orchestras. Noting that NCCO is “an ensemble that has to be seen as well as heard,” she announced the release of a DVD for next spring. She also thinks they should have a bigger presense on YouTube. An up-coming piece from Ellen Zwilich based on Commedia dell'Arte will be “very visual” & a lot of a fun. Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg also shared her ambition to someday have the orchestra perform Mahler 4.

The meeting started with all the attendeess introducing themselves, but I actually arrived late & missed this part, prompting Ms. Salerno-Sonnenberg to blurt out, “Who are you?” as soon as I came in.

§ Carmen Revisited
New Century Chamber Orchestra

Ernest Bloch: Concerto Grosso No. 1 with Piano Obbligato
Felix Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in D Minor
Stuart Canin, violin
Rodion Shchedrin: Carmen Suite

Thursday, September 22, 2011, 8pm, First Congregational Church, Berkeley
Friday, September 23, 2011, 8pm, First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto
Saturday, September 24, 2011, 8pm, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco
Sunday, September 25, 2011, 5pm, Osher Marin Jewish Community Center, San Rafael

Spitting In The Face Of The Devil

2011-09-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

In the last time slot of the last day of the SF Fringe Festival, I saw Bob Brader's solo show, Spitting in the Face of the Devil, about growing up with his stern & abusive ex-Marine father. As a teenager he discovers that his father has had sex with 2 of the male friends he has brought home from school. There are a lot of opportunities to get angry, but the narrative is direct & does not sensationalize. The show makes good use of an ordinary-looking family photo blown up to poster size. Mr. Brader was very invested in his performance, even for our audience of 25, who refused to laugh even at the lighter moments. Though it looks like he has been doing this piece for a couple of years now, it clearly has lost lost none of its power to move him. My theater companion was impressed by Mr. Brader's emotional presence but was bothered by the show's implicit association of homosexuality with pedophilia. Afterward, the story just sat with me, making me feel uncomfortable.

§ Spitting In The Face Of The Devil
by Bob Brader
John Montgomery Theatre Company
SF Fringe Festival 2011
Sunday 18 Sep 5:30 PM

Elite Waste

2011-09-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

This installation was parked outside the Exit Theatre during the SF Fringe Festival. Gregory Kloehn has transformed a dumpster into a neat & compact living space. The deadpan Mr. Koehn & his female associate talked up the convenience of dumpster living as if they were selling used cars. I was asked what it would take to get me into one of these today. I got to sit inside & discover the toilet, which is hidden under a bench seat. There is also a shower, but it is attached to the outside of the dumpster, making privacy an issue. A chicken coop is on top. Keeping the chicken company was a woman in a Chinese dress performing some sort of ritual involving moving slowly, wafting a shawl around & blowing soap bubbles. Someone suggested that she was communing with the chicken.

§ Elite Waste
by Gregory Kloehn
SF Fringe Festival 2011
Somewhere on Eddy Street

I Love You (We're F*#ked)

2011-09-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

Sunday I caught shows in the last 2 time slots of the SF Fringe Festival. In his naughtily-titled one-man show, Kevin J Thornton told jokes, sang & shared snippets of his life & thoughts. We heard about high school lock-ins, the Mall of America, & why "Happiness is for fuckin' house cats." Mr. Thornton sang about a half dozen songs, accompanying himself on the guitar & harmonica. I especially like the growly voice he showed off in one song with a pounding accompaniment. The baggy-eyed Mr. Thornton has an endearing presence, & he seems almost too comfortable being onstage. I sometimes felt something formidable under his cheery exterior as well.

The performance had an obvious improvisational feel, & only toward the end did Mr. Thornton admit that this was not the advertised show. This is his 10th fringe festival this year, & he started out with a piece about a devastating break-up, but by now he has gotten tired of talking about it & is evolving his performance. It seems that at least 25% of the show was different from one that a friend saw on Saturday night. Fragments of the original survive in a raunchy bit involving comparisons of male anatomy & a story about the discovery of a boyfriend's secret on-line dating profile in which he describes himself as "honest." I would gladly see Mr. Thornton again in the original show.

§ I Love You, (We're F*#ked)
Kevin J Thornton
SF Fringe Festival 2011
Sunday 18 Sep 4:00 PM
Exit Stage Left

Project Bandaloop Bound(less)

2011-09-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Project Bandaloop's Mint Plaza preview provoked me into attending their full performance of Bound(less) in Oakland on Saturday night. I arrived at least 20 minutes before the show, & the street in front of The Great Wall was already packed. It was shoulder to shoulder where we stood on the corner of Grand Ave. & Valley St. Project Bandaloop's dancers perform airborne, hanging off the side of the building by mountain climbing ropes. It's a spectacle, with the dancers scrambling down the wall like insects, assuming gravity-defying poses, & doing impossible lifts & leaps. The dancers often appear to be standing horizontally on the wall, creating the illusion that we are looking down at them from above. When they push away from the wall, they appear to fly in slow motion. One dancer sailed across the wall & precisely grabbed the corner of the building, causing gasps from the audience. I should be terrified watching, but Bandaloop move so gracefully that they made me wish I could do it myself.

The performance lasted about an hour & was composed of a variety of pieces for different combinations of the 6 dancers. In the opening number, 3 women joined by one long white dress create different shapes as they gradually descend. One solo starts with a male dancer sitting in a rocking chair suspended half way up the wall. He later seems to get involved in a fight with 2 other male dancers. A sad duet between a man & a woman ends when the woman reaches the ground while the man still hangs in the air.

The show was accompanied by a wonderful romantic jazz score by Dana Leong. The fearless Mr. Leong started the show by standing on the top ledge of the building & playing a soulful solo overture on the trombone. Safely back on the ground, he played melodic solos on the electric cello, throwing in tremolos, harmonics, pizzicatos & strumming for added color.

The performance was free, though there was a paid VIP section with seating directly in front of the wall. Many people showed up with their own lawn chairs or blankets. T-shirts & beverages were for sale. There were some crowd control problems across the street where the crowds on the sidewalk were so dense that people could not get to the entrance of a building.

§ Bound(less)
Project Bandaloop
September 17, 2011 8:30 pm
The Great Wall of Oakland

Up-Coming: Passione

2011-09-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

This week I saw a preview screening of Passione, John Turturro's sunny survey of the leading edge of the Neapolitan music scene. It's a compilation of over 20 performances, each staged for the camera in a different setting. Singers might be swaggering down graffiti-covered streets or acting out romantic dramas. One goofy scenario shows Gennaro Cosmo Parlato as a man wearing mascara having an emotional breakdown on a crowded beach. Go-go dancers figure prominently in another. In a classier sequence, guitarist Fausto Cigliano performs in a church with Caravaggio's The Seven Acts of Mercy in the background. In contrast to all this artificial theatricality, James Senese sings the title song in the blue light of a nightclub setting & provides the most authentic moments in the film.

I did not recognize any of the songs or musicians, except for "O Sole Mio," in an exotic rendition by M’Barka Ben Taleb. Spanish & North African influences are evident in many of the performances. The songs are interspersed with interviews, archival footage & commentary from Mr. Turturro, though I found the small bits of information presented to be confusing. Passione will play at New People Cinema for 2 weeks starting September 30th. Mr. Turturro is anticipated to be at the opening.

§ Passione
Directed by John Turturro
91 min. In Italian, English, Neapolitan and Arabic with subtitles.

Performers:
Mina
Spakka-Neapolis 55
Avion Travel
Misia
Pietra Montecorvino
Massimo Ranieri
Lina Sastri
M’Barka Ben Taleb
Gennaro Cosmo Parlato
Peppe Barra
Angela Luce
Max Casella
Raiz
James Senese
Fausto Cigliano
Fiorello
Fiorenza Calogero
Daniela Fiorentino
Lorena Tamaggio
Enzo Avitabile
Pino Daniele

Opera San José: Idomeneo

2011-09-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

Opera San José puts on a good show. Last Sunday I attended their grandly staged Idomeneo. A pre-curtain supertitle informed us that the historically accurate production is based on the art of Minoan Crete, & we indeed saw scenic Minoan frescoes, period costumes & a massive 3-story temple. A super even carries on a vase authentically decorated with an octopus.

The performance lasted over 3 and a half hours & encompassed an aria for Arbace in Act III, Idomeneo's final aria "Torna la pace," & the ballet music. Conductor George Cleve was neither too fast nor too slow, & he made it easy to sit through the long acts. He established such an even flow that it felt like an abrupt interruption when Act I ended. The orchestra followed him well, though the strings predominated, & I often had a hard time hearing the winds & brass.

Soprano Sandra Bengochea was a strong-voiced, coquettish Ilia. She almost seemed to be seducing Idomeneo in her Act II aria. Mezzo Betany Coffland has a bright, high-sounding voice, but conveyed masculinity as Idamente. Tenor Alexander Boyer in the title role sounded both weighty & soft-edged. He seemed scared of the coloratura passages, but he valiantly made it through "Fuor del mar" & the punishing "Torna la pace" without incident. Soprano Jasmina Halimic had a powerful, focused sound as Elettra. She pulled out all the stops for her mad scene, reaching a frightening level of insanity in the scored laughter. Other highlights included the Act II trio & the stately opening of the sacrifice scene. Silas Elash's authoritative Heavenly Voice came down into the auditorium through an opening in the ceiling, &, instead of instead of trombones, the house's theater organ blasted the audience. It was earth-shaking.

The cast includes a good-sized chorus, a scantily-clad corps de ballet & a handful of supers, so the stage never looked under-populated. The dancers recreated poses from Minoan paintings & mimicked a bull-leaping stunt in the ballet. The staging incorporated Neptune, played by a bare-chested actor with long white hair, a crown & intimidating pecs. He looked like The Little Mermaid's father. At key moments, he walked on stage like Banquo's ghost, seen only by Idomeneo.

The San Jose audience was quiet, attentive & appreciative throughout, & they responded with a standing ovation. I attended thanks to the Opera Tattler, & it was a pleasant surprise when we ran across the effervescent Out West Arts during the 1st intermission. We also chatted with Oboeinsight, taking her break without leaving the pit & clearly enjoying this gig. Interestingly, the production is double cast, with Idamante sung by a tenor instead of a mezzo in alternate performances. The cordial Opera San José sells fresh baked chocolate chip cookies in the rear lobby, & the smell is irresistible.

§ Idomeneo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Opera San José
Conductor: George Cleve
Stage Director: Brad Dalton
Choreographer: Dennis Nahat
Set DesignerL Steven C. Kemp
Costume Designer: Johann Stegmeir

Ilia: Sandra Bengochea
Elettra: Jasmina Halimic
Idamante: Betany Coffland
Idomeneo: Alexander Boyer
Arbace: Nova Safo
High Priest: Mathew Edwardsen
The Voice: Silas Elash
Trojan Men: Jo Vincent Parks, Raymond Chavez
Cretan Women: Tori Grayum, Jillian Boye
Nettuno (non-singing): Paul Gemignani

Opera San José Orchestra, Chorus, Dancers and Supers

California Theatre, San José
Sun., Sept. 11, 2011 3 p.m.

Oddball Films: Strange Sinema 44

2011-09-14T00:04:00.000-07:00

Oddball Films lived up to its name even more than usual when I attended the program this past Saturday night. Among the inexplicable offerings were home movies shot in India & Nepal, a titillating novelty film depicting a lesbian seduction, a 1970s agitprop docudrama from San Francisco about undocumented workers, & a Dali-inspired Porky Pig cartoon. The big revelation for me, though, was Dimitri Kirsanoff's silent Menilmontant (1926). It opens without warning with a shocking double ax murder, the preface to a Gothic tale of 2 sisters orphaned by the crime. The film has no intertitles, & Kirsanoff employs sophisticated cinematic techniques such as rapid-fire montage, double-exposure & jump cuts, but always in service of the story. The film has a strong psychological mood & an atmosphere of dread. I think I gasped out loud during an emotionally devastating scene in which one of the sisters is offered a scrap of bread by a stranger on a park bench. I really need to find out more about this movie, & I'm puzzled as to why I'd never heard of it before. There were several silent movies on the program, so Oddball Films director Stephen Parr played various electronic soundtracks to accompany them, though the often eerie music did not fit any of the films well. Mr. Parr also apologized for not being able to project Menilmontant at the correct speed.

§ "Strange Sinema 44” Oddities From the Archives

Travel films shot in Northern India & Nepal (1950s?)
Hypothese Beta (1969)
Fidelity of Report (1946)
Baron Munchausen’s Dream (Georges Méliès, 1911)
Amour Pour Un Femme (1950)
Los Desarraigados (1974)
Menilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926)
Dough For The Do-do (Friz Freleng, 1949)
Red Ball Express (Steve Segal, 1975)

Oddball Films
Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 8:00PM

SF Opera: Turandot

2011-09-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I attended opening night at the San Francisco Opera as a standee. There was some confusion, as a catering tent had been set up on top of our numbered spaces outside, but we managed to sort ourselves out with our marks. Near the head of the line was of course the Opera Tattler, as well as SFMike, looking elegant in his tuxedo & modesty declining to brag about attending 2 opening nights in one week. Upstairs standing room was not crowded, & there was room to spread out. We saw the familiar David Hockney sets, which are cartoony & garish. The bare-chested executioner sports an impressive dragon tattoo. The look is preferable to the comic book sumo wrestler I saw the last time.

Conductor Nicola Luisotti led a vigorous & loud performance of Puccini's sadistic opera. The chorus belted, & the orchestra was ear-splitting in the climaxes. Tenor Marco Berti as Calaf made a consistently big, solid sound without ever seeming to push or strain, though I found his acting & singing to be uninflected. I was surprised when he cut short the last note of his "Nessum dorma." Soprano Iréne Theorin is a powerful & intense singer, & she communicated Turandot's anger & iciness well. Leah Crocetto as Liù was the real star of the evening. Her singing is lyrically Italiante, & though her voice is large she also sang wonderful, far-reaching pianissimos in Act I. She convincingly conveyed Liù's purity & innocence. Ping, Pang & Pong were an animated trio, & their clownish movements were easy to read from the balcony. I liked the roomy voice of baritone Hyung Yun as Ping. Even though they were playing old men, Joseph Frank as the emperor & Raymond Aceto as Timur were sturdy & incisive.

For opening night, statues of golden lions stood in front of the Opera House, & the boxes were festooned with red & blue garlands. Patrons took lots of photos of the over-size bouquet of roses in the lobby. The people seated in the last row of the balcony appeared to be first-time opera goers. They were fidgety & chatty, even during "Nessun dorma."

§ Turandot
by Giacomo Puccini
(Last duet and finale by Franco Alfano)

San Francisco Opera
Conductor, Nicola Luisotti
Director, Garnett Bruce
Set Designer, David Hockney

A Mandarin, Ryan Kuster
Liù, Leah Crocetto
Timur, Raymond Aceto
Calaf, Marco Berti
Prince of Persia, Christopher Jackson
Pu-Ti-Pao, Justin Roninger
Ping, Hyung Yun
Pang, Greg Fedderly
Pong, Daniel Montenegro
Handmaidens, Dvora Djoraev, Virgina Pluth
Emperor Altoum, Joseph Frank
Turandot, Iréne Theorin

War Memorial Opera House
Fri 09/9/11 8:00pm

Project Bandaloop Sneak Preview

2011-09-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon I stepped into Mint Plaza for this short but stunning presentation by Project Bandaloop. They perform death-defying dances while suspended off the sides of buildings by mountain climbing ropes. The crowd below looked up to watch an excerpt from the up-coming Bound(less). Three women wearing one long dress make their way down the face of an 8 story building, sometimes struggling with each other, sometimes moving in harmony. The dancers create the illusion that they are walking down the face of the building. It seems like it would be terrifying to watch, but it was entrancing, & I was impressed by their synchronization as well as their ab strength. The audience gasped & applauded moves in which the dancers pushed away from the wall & appeared to fly. We also laughed when 2 workers in the building appeared at their windows to see what was going on.

This was followed by Swing, a humorous duet in which a swing dance couple takes advantage of being airborne to do impossible lifts & jumps. In between set-ups, the company's director, Amelia Rudolph, talked about the history of the Bandaloop & answered questions from the audience. This peek made me want to check out their full performance in Oakland next weekend.

§ Sneak Preview of Bound(less)
Project Bandaloop
Friday, September 9 at 5:00 pm
The Mint Plaza

§ Bound(less)
Project Bandaloop
September 15-17 at 8:30 pm
The Great Wall, at the corner of West Grand and Broadway in uptown Oakland

SF Fringe: Microvation

2011-09-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

Thursday night I was at the SF Fringe Festival to check out this one-man show parodying motivational business speakers. Bill Bernat, casually dressed in blue jeans & wearing a headset mic, stood at a lectern & introduced himself as a Microvational Speaker, explaining that he would motivate us...but just a little. For the next hour, with the aid of PowerPoint slides, he described a catalog of stress-inducing co-workers & told Dilbert-like stories from his days as an IT manager. The show is a series of bullet points rather than a theatrical experience. Mr. Bernat is frank about the inherent competition within corporate environments, where in order to get ahead you may need to sabotage your own coworkers. There was something disturbing about his own admissions of his nettlesome workplace behavior.

The EXIT Theater spaces are cramped, & the show was well-attended. The enthusiastic Fringe ushers encouraged us to purchase beverages to bring into the theater, & a good proportion of the audience did so.

§ Microvation
by Bill Bernat
EXIT Theatre
Thursday, September 8, 9:00 PM

Also:
Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM
Sunday, September 11, 2:30 PM
Wednesday, September 14, 10:30 PM
Thursday, September 15, 7:00 PM
Saturday, September 17, 6:00 PM

§ SF Fringe Festival 2011
September 7 - 18

Paul Madonna at the Mechanics' Institute

2011-09-09T15:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening local cartoonist Paul Madonna gave a talk about his work at the Mechanics' Institute. Though the visual aspect of his art makes the biggest impression, most of his strips actually start with the text. He explained that he does not want the images to illustrate the text redundantly. Rather, the text should qualify the image. Amazingly, he never pencils in first, & he uses a rapidograph drafting pen on the wrong kind of paper deliberately to get an erratic line. He's started making larger drawings, as big as 3' x 4'. These cannot be completed on site, so he sketches on site for one to three hours, blows up the sketches, then finishes the drawings in his studio with the aid of photo references. Despite the freshness & immediacy of the images, some may have been in progress for a year or more before being published. Mr. Madonna emphasized the constant discipline required for him to produce his work. Once he left school, it took him 10 years to get published, & he comes across as very happy with his current success.

The Mechanics' Institute recently knocked out a wall in their meeting room, making it much more comfortable for these gatherings. Wine, coffee & snacks were available, & the room smelled of warm cookies at the beginning of the event.

§ Everything Is Its Own Reward: An All Over Coffee Collection
Paul Madonna
The Mechanics' Institute
Thu, 09/08/2011 - 6:00pm

SF Symphony in Civic Center

2011-09-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

Despite early morning clouds, it was pleasant weather & blue skies for the San Francisco Symphony's free noontime concert at Civic Center on Thursday. The Symphony is celebrating its centennial season in a big way, & I admittedly came more for the atmosphere than the music. Almost the first person I saw when I arrived was SFMike, blissfully rocking out to John Adams's Short Ride in a Fast Machine. The crowd went back at least two-thirds of the length of the plaza. Though I stood near the back, I could see Lang Lang's head-banging moves during the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1, though his interpretation was actually quite controlled & well-proportioned. In the Britten Variations, the different sections of the orchestra played their solos with keen articulation. The amplification was not overdone, & the balances did not sound distorted.

After the program an excitable Mayor Ed Lee presented the orchestra with a proclamation, & MTT was cheeky enough to ask for free parking as well. Mr. Lee asked Lang Lang "to get back on the piano" & asked the audience to sing Happy Birthday loud enough to be heard in China. The plaza was decorated with balloons & a large birthday cake, which caused the people around me to make inappropriate jokes about MTT jumping out of it.

§ Free San Francisco Symphony Concert in Civic Center Plaza
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
Lang Lang, piano
San Francisco Symphony

John Adams
Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Liszt
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major

Britten
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra

Thu, Sep 8, 2011 11:30am
Civic Center Plaza

Hong Kong Cinema: Merry-Go-Round

2011-09-08T01:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw a preview screening of Merry-Go-Round, the opening night film for the San Francisco Film Society's up-coming Hong Kong Cinema festival. 2 woman living in present-day San Francisco travel to Hong Kong in very different circumstances & on very different missions. Gradually their paths cross & 2 romances play out, one modern & one reaching back to the 1930s. The movie unfolds at an unhurried pace as a series of disclosures to the audience. It's a luxuriously overgrown film, with several tendrils that take a while to get to the ends of. Characters' emotional states are revealed through hyper-realistic settings, & the movie is rich in camera set ups. The short prologue establishing the 2 women's lives in San Francisco must have been shot in at least 25 locations. The love story is carried by sequences in which characters look pensive while someone on the soundtrack sings to the simple accompaniment of the guitar. I was distracted by the film's strangely under-populated Hong Kong (a huge hospital has only one patient) & the unaccounted passage of time that allows characters to have aged barely 40 years since World War II.

§ Merry-Go-Round (2010)
Directed by Clement Cheng & Yan Yan Mak
124 min. In Cantonese with subtitles

Plays September 23 & 24 as part of Hong Kong Cinema

§ Hong Kong Cinema festival, September 23–25
San Francisco Film Society
New People Cinema

§ Photo credit: Courtesy of San Francisco Film Society

Salle Pianos: Chaplin And Bach

2011-09-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night I attended this musical salon featuring piano improvisations & Charlie Chaplin movies. The venue is a piano showroom that opens onto the art gallery next door. Attendees were asked for a $25 - $30 donation, after which they received a glass of wine & mingled among the pianos being restored. There was a 50 minute performance featuring 3 young musicians, who I assume are or were students at the SF Conservatory of Music. Pianist Chad Thomas played 2 preludes by Nicolai Kapustin which sound exactly like lounge piano improvisations but are actually completely written-out compositions based on classical forms. Soprano Elizabeth Hertzberg sang the Bach aria "Bist du bei mir" in a soothing, velvety voice. Pianist Adrian Borcea then played 6 movements from Bach's keyboard Partita No. 6. After each movement, a short excerpt from a Chaplin film was projected on the wall overhead, accompanied by Mr. Borcea improvising on a theme from the movement. We saw bits of The Great Dictator, Modern Times, The Kid (with Turkish intertitles) & The Circus. Mr. Borcea played a 19th century piano whose brittle sound I never quite got used to. Finally, we heard a lively composition by Mr. Borcea for 2 pianos. The pianos were mis-tuned with one another, creating a honky-tonk feel. It reminded me of a score for a Fellini movie.

The evening was hosted by the wry & nattily dressed Tibor Szabo. After the performance he brought out bread, salad, a huge platter of pasta & a tray of pastries. The attendees spent the rest of the evening socializing. There were about 25 of us, but apparently these events can be much more crowded. The audience ranged from students to a lady, dressed as if for opening night at the opera, who admitted to her 60s.

§ Salle Pianos: Chaplin And Bach

Nicolai Kapustin: Preludes 23 & 19
Chad Thomas, Piano

Bach: Bist du bei mir
Elizabeth Hertzberg, soprano
Adrian Borcea, piano

Bach: Partita No.6 in E minor, BWV 830
Adrian Borcea, piano

Adrian Borcea: Work for 2 pianos, title not announced
Adrian Borcea, Chad Thomas, pianos

Saturday, 3 September 2011
7:pm wine reception 7:30 pm Concert