ABS: Weihnachts-Oratorium

Earlier this month, I heard the American Bach Soloists perform Bach's Christmas Oratorio in St. Ignatius Church on the USF campus. In his introductory remarks, conductor Jeffrey Thomas told us this was the 1st ABS performance here. The large interior was well-lit & decorated with garlands, so the setting felt especially grand & festive. Performance forces were minimal: 4 soloists, 16 choristers, in a widely spaced row behind the orchestra, & about 20 instrumentalists, mostly one per part. The sound was not as muddy as I had expected, but it did seem to dissipate into the cavernous space rather than fill it.

Everyone gave punctilious, scrupulously consistent performances. Maestro Thomas's tempos were often fleet, but his beat was always perfectly regular & so never felt rushed. Tenor Kyle Stegall had a wonderfully bright, flexible voice & very clear diction. He sang his recitatives expressively, & his virtuoso arias sounded fluent & agile. He seemed to take breaths in comfortable places. I enjoyed the firm yet easeful voice of baritone Jesse Blumberg. He singing was athletic & elegant, & his high notes warm & open.

Soprano Hélène Brunet's voice was high, warbling & youthful & appropriately angelic. Mezzo Agnes Vojtko made a grounded, sustained sound. She executed long phrases efficiently, without seeming to take breaths, & was steadfast. The choristers were secure & dispatched their contrapuntal choruses pristinely. The soloists joined in the chorales, which were stately.

Individual orchestra members stood when they had obbligato parts, & there were many excellent solos. The trumpet's trills were impressively rapid & even. The tone of the flute was pleasingly pure & without breathiness. Debra Nagy's oboe playing is beautifully liquid, & her accompaniment to "Flößt, mein Heiland" was flowing & had clear-cut dynamics. The aria's off-stage echo voice always came in neatly on time. The strings played vigorously, & leader Elizabeth Blumenstock gave a vivid, wave-like motion to her part in "Ach, wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen." The horns struggled to be in tune.

The concert was well attended, & the sober-minded audience refrained from applauding between the separate cantatas, though many stood enthusiastically for the performers at the end. There were long lines for restrooms, even if one ventured outside to a nearby building. Late-comers squeezed themselves into a non-existent seat next to my concert companion, not realizing that they were in the wrong pew.

§ Bach's Christmas Oratorio
American Bach Soloists
American Bach Choir
Hélène Brunet, soprano
Agnes Vojtko, alto
Kyle Stegall, tenor
Jesse Blumberg, baritone
Jeffrey Thomas, conductor

Saturday December 12 2015 7:30 pm
Saint Ignatius Church, San Francisco

A Christmas Cat

This cat, wearing a Christmas sweater & a leash, sat looking into the Peet's Coffee in Upper Fillmore on Saturday morning.

It's quite a beautiful cat. I snapped it's picture from inside Peet's, where I also discovered the owner, an old lady, who proudly explained how she trained the cat to stay on a leash by simple persistence. This is the 2nd leashed cat I've seen this year. Both cats acted weirdly immobile.

The Hard Nut

I had so much fun seeing The Hard Nut at Cal Performances over the weekend. This is the justly popular Mark Morris version of The Nutcracker ballet. The 1st act party scene takes place in the 1960s & is a slapstick comedy all by itself. It's not possible to follow all the on-stage shenanigans. John Heginbotham as Mrs. Stahlbaum is a convincing matron, & he brilliantly cheated the audienced out of a pirouette at the start of the act. Kraig Patterson is a great comic performer as the harried housekeeper & even dances on his toes. June Omura is entirely believable as the spoiled little brother. The show's fact sheet says she is 48! Mark Morris himself portrays the paunchy Mr. Stahlbaum. For the Waltz of the Snowflakes, the dancers create a dazzling snow storm by tossing handfuls of glittering confetti as they leap. The spectacle is worth the price of admission & had the audience cheering.

Act II tells a separate story about a round-the-world search for the hard nut that will undo a princess's unfortunate disfigurement. The national dances appear in weirdly satirical versions, such as an Arabian dance featuring a highly suspect figure in a burqa. The Waltz of the Flowers is another highlight. It's cheeky, unclassical & rude, yet also beautiful. At times it reminded me of a synchronized swimming routine.

The large sets by comic book illustrator Charles Burns are distinctive & creepy & do not feel at odds with Tchaikovsky's often sinister score. The Berkeley Symphony, led by George Cleve, sounded great. There were nice woodwind solos, & the orchestra had a velvety texture. The music flowed soothingly. I loved hearing the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir sing from the stage.

The performance received an enthusiastic ovation & cheers. The dancers looked like they enjoyed the show as much as the audience. I did not see many children, though a father & his young son sat behind me & giggled frequently, especially at the unisex corps de ballet in the Waltz of the Snowflakes & the Waltz of the Flowers.

§ The Hard Nut
Mark Morris Dance Group

Music by Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker)
Choreography by Mark Morris
Production based on the work of Charles Burns

Berkeley Symphony Orchestra
George Cleve, conductor 

Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir
Robert Geary, artistic director

Marie: Lauren Grant
Fritz: June Omura
Louise/Princess Pirlipat: Jenn Weddel
Dr. Stahlbaum/King: Mark Morris
Mrs. Stahlbaum/Queen: John Heginbotham
Housekeeper/Nurse: Kraig Patterson
Drosselmeier: Billy Smith
Nutcracker/Young Drosselmeier: Aaron Loux
Barbie Doll: Chelsea Lynn Acree
Robot: Spencer Ramirez

Sat, Dec 15, 8 pm
Cal Performances, Berkeley
Zellerbach Hall

SantaCon 2012

I made the mistake of taking the 19-Polk to my afternoon destination this past Saturday & so got a front-row seat for SantaCon, the modern revival of the yuletide tradition of misrule that once got Christmas banned in this country. Young people in Santa outfits, or simply in red apparel, prowled the sidewalks & lined up at bars all along Polk Street from Union Street to Geary.  I saw a team of Santas pulling a large wooden sleigh with female riders down the street. A posse of wassailers rode the bus with us for several blocks. They were buzzed but well-behaved.

I rode BART to the East Bay in the evening, & there were Santas in every car, in various degrees of booziness. The official San Francisco SantaCon Web page clearly states "This is not a bar crawl" then lists about 50 participating clubs & bars.

Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Market

As testament to the success of the DIY movement, I've been to 4 indie craft fairs within the past month without even trying. When I visited the Renegade Craft Fair late Saturday afternoon, it was bustling, & I was told that it was even more crowded earlier in the day. The Concourse Exhibition Center was jammed, & there was a feeling of abundance.

Up-cycling is the name of the game here, though there was something suspect about this drum cymbal turned into a hanging ornament by Chime Jewelry.

I'd want this glow-in-the-dark bigfoot t-shirt from Maiden Voyage Clothing Co. on my Christmas list.

Heidi Gibson's custom miniature paintings were too precious for words.

The cuteness quotient of both vendors & shoppers was near lethal. Grace Hawthorne of Paper Punk did a good job pulling me in by letting me fold one of the components from her paper toy kits. I bought a granola bar from the cheery folks at Awesome Bar but ended up giving it to a friend who skipped his dinner. He claimed it was indeed awesome.

§ 4th Annual Renegade Craft Fair San Francisco Holiday Market
December 15 + 16,  2012
11am-6pm both days
Concourse Exhibition Center

Philharmonia Baroque: A Bach Christmas

Friday night I heard Philharmonia Baroque's Christmas-themed, all-Bach program. Guest conductor Masaaki Suzuki has a great head of white hair. He gestures vigorously & cues all the entrances. He led with consistently fast tempos, though the speediness was somehow never pulse-quickening. The famous Air of the Orchestral Suite No. 3 felt arid. The trumpets often struggled to keep up with the rapid tempos.

The chorus of 23 for the Cantata BWV 63 & the Magnificat sounded happy & clear. Alto Fabiana González makes a clean, solid sound. Soprano Sherezade Panthaki has a pure, pretty voice that made me think of a bird in flight.  Bass-baritone Dashon Burton has a deep, open sound, & there is a nice relaxed quality to his singing. Tenor Dann Coakwell's voice is clean & unstrained. He looked joyful & emotionally involved while performing. Soprano Claire Kelm moved back & forth between the chorus & the front of the stage to sing the soprano II part in the Magnificat. Oboist Marc Schachman Gonzalo Ruiz played clean & mellow obbligato solos in the cantata & Magnficat.

This concert presented the earlier E-flat version of the Magnificat, which seemed pretty similar to the standard version in D, except for a couple of interpolated choruses in German. Ms. Panthaki sounded mellifluous in the Quia Respexit. The voices of her & Mr. Burton, while both attractive, did not really blend in their duets. Organist Hanneke van Proosdij did double duty playing one of the recorder obbligatos in Esurientes implevit bonis, while harpsichordist Charles Sherman took over the organ. The male choristers did a nice job making their 16th notes in Fecit potentiam sound distinct & separated.

The concert was well attended & the audience quiet & polite. They applauded especially for the chorus & soloists. A phone rang from somewhere just before the Suscepit of the Magnificat.

§ A Bach Christmas
Philharmonica Baroque
Masaaki Suzuki, conductor

Sherezade Panthaki, soprano
Claire Kelm, soprano
Fabiana González, alto
Dann Coakwell, tenor
Dashon Burton, bass-baritone

Philharmonia Chorale, Bruce Lamott, director

J.S. BACH Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV 1068
J.S. BACH Cantata No. 63 Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63
J.S. BACH Magnificat in E-flat major, BWV 243a

Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 8:00 pm
The Herbst Theatre,
San Francisco

Christmas Book Tree

Readers Bookstore, Fort Mason

This festive holiday tree made of a old books, Christmas lights, & a coffee mug topper is on display in the Readers Bookstore at Fort Mason. The titles do not seem to be Christmas related. A nearby signs states that books from the tree will not be for sale until after the holidays. I was also glad to see that there is cafe in the bookshop again.

Bazaar Bizarre Holiday Show

Sunday afternoon I checked out Bazaar Bizarre, the big indie craft fair, at the Concourse Exhibition Center. A friend neatly sums up the artwork at these fairs as "owls, bikes & whales." The event was well-attended, & most of the merchandise, vendors & shoppers could fairly be described as "cute." Many of the attendees were families. I felt like I was in a nursery school.

Old maps were a popular item to upcycle. Here Granny Panty Designs folded origami flowers out of them.

A serious-looking fellow showed me a menu of squiggly, whimsical images that he could draw with a sewing machine. He used a bicycle to charge the battery that ran his machine.

I did not expect to see the many food items for sale, all with really nice packaging. Sweet Lauren Cakes, based in Bernal Heights, offered cakepops in packages that could have come off the shelves of an up-scale retail shop.

T-WE's colorful labels & tidy boxes made their boutique tea blends look very appealing.

The folks of Milton & Small sold out their cold brew coffee, poured into bottles that made the product look like an old-timey patent medicine.

All this hand-made stuff is not cheap, but most of the vendors I asked seemed to be having a good weekend. I saw several attendees wandering the aisles drinking wine out of plastic cups.

§ Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco
Saturday December 1st & Sunday December 2nd 2012
Concourse Exhibition Center

An Area 51 Christmas

I'm completely in favor of this Christmas window display in the Marc Jacobs store in Pacific Heights. Apart from presents beneath a saguaro cactus hung with lights, nothing says Christmas in the Southwest like a space alien crash landing in the Nevada desert. His UFO prop looks like it could be an actual working vehicle, though of the terrestrial wheeled kind.