Hiromi is a phenomenon of our times. When she settles in with jazz piano, it’s as if an alien spirit of high inventiveness has taken over artistic control, using her as a mere vessel to exude a wealth of ideas, transitions and pulse-quickening runs that defy easy characterization. A composed Japanese woman and mother, she still exudes glints of the precocious girl who vied to be a classical artist. What stands out after a long evening at SFJazz was her…
Composer Mason Bates, 44, keeps astounding us with his versatility. Long seen as the unlikely East Bay DJ getting a classical Ph.D. at Cal, he then created a biopera about Steve Jobs and produced orchestral scores integrating live players with electronic sounds getting wide attention. And now he has launched his high-impact Piano Concerto—a boisterous and varied message stating that he is still very much out there. with yet more surprises up his sleeve. Bates’ new 29-minute Piano Concerto sets off…
In the elite world of art song, mezzo Sasha Cooke comes closest today to wearing the mantle of the late East Bay singer Lorraine Hunt, who had left us indelible musical memories. Cooke’s evening recital Sunday achieved multiple goals with reflections on two years of nationwide pandemic disruptions. She mastered (and memorized) an unprecedented array of 17 world-premiere songs written for the occasion by as many composers, using texts and poems suited to the theme. And for those listening on…
Vocalist Renée Fleming’s latest recital is actually a unique trio delving into the mind that is processing her music-making: A trio of the soprano, the piano accompanist and the neuroscience prof from U.C. Berkeley, Ehud Isacoff. This rare lecture-concert is altogether vivid and possible in this streaming format on the web, with Isacoff constantly “entering the brain” of a singer to explain about emotion (despair, repose, lament, love), memory, and performance requisites. Diva Fleming has spent some of the past…
BERKELEY—Julia Bullock doesn’t just sing the music. She has a unique knack for feeling the music in every pore. She prompts you to exclaim, “Drop everything, Julia’s on!” In the surprisingly effective new format called the virtual recital, the Munich-based American mezzo is giving a 3-month-long display of German lieder and American show tunes, with that magnetic bi-national songwriter Kurt Weill linking in between. For this repertory, she is a stunning interpreter, with an enviable German pronunciation helped, no doubt,…
The most telling statements are often the simplest. Instead of symphonic moving vans, we get the highly manoeuvrable vehicle of an unaccompanied instrument, telling us that more is less. No music emanating from our days of unrest is more eloquent than Anthony McGill’s brief and understated clarinet solo variant on “America, the Beautiful” that we hear on You Tube as part of his “TakeTwoKnees” series. As one of the most esteemed black figures in American symphonic music, he is a…
BERKELEY—Pianist Jonathan Biss must be winning grateful nods from the composer high above right about now. Biss meticulously adhered to all the score markings in his all-Beethoven recital, avoiding all flimflam, personal touches or effusive messages from the heart in getting down to brass tacks (as this observer verified, with score in lap as it firmly poured out its instructions in black and white). Consider Biss’ playing the “Moonlight” Sonata. Many interpreters will douse it in perfume, draw out the…
Formidable artists are flooding the Bay Area scene these days, the second one this week being another pianist, Natasha Paremski. She bit off one of the most demanding programs imaginable, all tucked into her incendiary hour of earthquake magnitude linking both Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit” and Balakirev’s “Islamey,” a dual feat comparable to conquering both poles in the same week. All with supersonic speed and Olympic power. The tone-painting of Ravel’s opus is well-known, comprising a sea-sprite (Ondine, with…
Taking on the most passionate repertoire by Prokofiev and Liszt, the pianist maintained total composure. At a time when a Horowitz or Liberace would be gyrating and sweating profusely, the artist emerged as neat and cool as at the start. This is Paul Grosvenor, a superb 26-year-old English pianist whose very composure may be his only enemy. He makes the great virtuosic challenges at the keyboard seem like child’s play, without a mussed hair nor a mopped face—perfectly dressed, down…
You could write a book about pianist/teacher Leon Fleisher: Childhood prodigy, collaborator with Hertz and Monteux, student of Artur Schnabel, recipient of Rachmaninoff’s advice, victim of a severe three-decade right-hand injury, commissioner and performer of numerous left-hand-only compositions, eminent Peabody teacher. Now 90, the indestructible Fleisher returned to San Francisco to play a Mozart concerto, cautious solo pieces and reminiscences. Some think that the Year One for American pianists bursting onto the international scene was 1958, with Van Cliburn winning…