We've lined up a provocative season of tantalizing music for you starting in September 2014.
Please join us!
1 FILMS AND INTERLUDES
SAN FRANCISCO SF Conservatory of Music • Monday, September 29, 2014 8PM
MILL VALLEY 142 Throckmorton Theatre • Thursday, October 2, 2014 8PM
FILM: A Trip Down Market Street • scored by Gabriel Bolaños Chamorro
VIDEO: Klatka Still • scored by David Sanford
FILM: Borderline • scored by Sean Varah
FILM: Marcia Scott’s Bolinas • music by John Cage
Claude Debussy • Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Minor, L.135
Henri Dutilleux • D’ombre et de silence (In Shadow and Silence)
Felix Leuschner • Krieg ohne Schlacht for Tenor and Cello (2008) 2014 LCCE COMPETITION WINNER
Philippe Bodin • Métal
Left Coast screens silent films, beginning with early 20th century footage of a trip down San Francisco's Market Street, accompanied by a live score by Gabriel Chamorro, and continuing with films scored by Sean Varah. We'll also present the winner of the LCCE 2014 Composition Contest Felix Leuschner's Krieg ohne Schlacht a theatrical duet for cello and tenor. Serving as abstract foils for these dramatic works are French compositions; we feature favorite works chosen by the Left Coast players.
2 SUNG AND STRUMMED
MILL VALLEY 142 Throckmorton Theatre • Sunday, December 7, 2014 7PM
SAN FRANCISCO Dennis Gallagher Arts Pavilion • Monday, December 8, 2014 8PM
Hans Werner Henze · Carillon, Récitatif, Masque: Trio for Mandolin, Guitar, and Harp
Dominick Argento · Letters from Composers for Voice and Guitar
John Anthony Lennon · Ghostfires for Voice, Flute, Guitar, and Harp
Frank Martin · Quatre pièces brèves for Guitar
Amadeus Regucera · New Work for Bass Flute and Harp WORLD PREMIERE
Sam Nichols · New Work for Voice, Flute, Guitar, and Harp WORLD PREMIERE
Igor Stravinsky · Four Songs for Voice, Flute, Guitar, and Harp
In a concert curated by Left Coast guitarist Michael Goldberg, the timbral possibilities presented by an unusual collection of plucked instruments mandolin, harp, and guitar are combined with flute and voice. Stravinsky's delightfully off-kilter folk song settings and John Anthony Lennon's setting of text by James Joyce are complemented by a companion commission from the Bay Area composer Sam Nichols. Left Coast is delighted to welcome guest artists Ann Moss, Meredith Clark, and Travis Andrews, and guest composer Amadeus Regucera.
3 CIRCA 1945
SAN FRANCISCO SF Conservatory of Music • Monday, February 2, 2015 8PM
MILL VALLEY 142 Throckmorton Theatre • Thursday, February 5, 2015 8PM
Bohuslav Martinů · Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello, and Piano, H.315
Igor Stravinsky · Elegy for Violin
David Coll · Remix: Take the A-Train WORLD PREMIERE
Olivier Messiaen · Quartet for the End of Time
What did the world sound like in the 1940s? Music of that era straddled the old and new, as Left Coast shows with Martinů's neo-classical oboe quartet and a meditative elegy by Stravinsky. The ensemble revisits Messiaen's ground-breaking Quartet for the End of Time, last featured on our series in 2008, when Jerome Simas' sound was described as "clear, splendidly liquid, agile, mysterious, remote," and Eric Zivian's "bright-toned playing showered fistfuls of glittering notes" and with his "slow, serene pulse... he was, as ever, alert to the music's every gesture." (SF Classical Voice) And David Coll's new remix of the Ellington/Strayhorn classic "Take the A-Train" reflects on the WWII era from a 21st century vantage point.
4 DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS
MILL VALLEY 142 Throckmorton Theatre • Thursday, March 19, 2015 8PM
SAN FRANCISCO SF Conservatory of Music • Sunday, March 22, 2015 7PM
Additional free performance of Death with Interruptions only: 12:15pm, Monday March 16, 2015, (Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley Campus)
Franz Schubert · Andante con moto from String Quartet No.14 in D Minor, D.810, “Death and the Maiden”
Kurt Rohde · Death with Interruptions adapted by Thomas Laqueur from the novel by José Saramago, presented in collaboration with Volti SF · WORLD PREMIERE
Left Coast presents a new dramatic musical work based on Nobel Prize winner José Saramago's novelDeath with Interruptions. With music composed by Kurt Rohde and a libretto by the distinguished UC Berkeley historian Thomas Laqueur, the story recounts what happens when death, who lives in an unnamed Iberian country with her taciturn scythe, falls in love with the principal cellist of a local orchestra and fails to claim his life. Soprano Nikki Einfeld and cellist Leighton Fong are joined by Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and Volti San Francisco the noted chamber choir as well as other collaborators. The concert opens with a contrasting take on the imagined embodiment of death, Schubert's, from his famous string quartet.
Support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award granted to Professor Thomas Laqueur.
5 LEFT COAST GOES TO THE MUSEUM
MILL VALLEY 142 Throckmorton Theatre • Sunday, May 31, 2015 8PM
SAN FRANCISCO SF Conservatory of Music • Monday, June 1, 2015 8PM
Robert Schumann · Impromptus sur une romance de Clara Wieck for Piano, Op. 5
Thea Musgrave · Impromptu No. 2 for Flute, Oboe, and Clarinet
Jon Deak · Lady Chatterley’s Dream for Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, and Piano
NEW WORKS by Jean Ahn · Nick Benavides · Jonathan Holland · Emily Koh · Mei-Fang Lin · Ryan Suleiman
Two exquisitely contrasting artworks, one black and one gold, displayed in Gallery 16 of the de Young Museum, serve as inspiration for the six emerging composers commissioned to write new works for this program. Both sculptures create art out of leftovers: Learning of an arson attack on a church that had a predominantly African American congregation, Cornelia Parker collected the charred remains of the building and constructed Anti-Mass, which seems to float in the gallery, defying gravity. On the opposite wall is El Anatsui's Hovor II; he transformed discarded bottle tops into an enormous opulent wall hanging. Completing this program are impromptus by Thea Musgrave and Robert Schumann, and the uproariousLady Chatterly's Dream, composed by New York Philharmonic bassist Jon Deak.
Support for this project was provided by the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grants Program.
PROGRAMS SUBJECT TO CHANGE
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