A ONCE-IN-A-BLUE-MOON SOPRANO FROM MOSCOW
                                              By Paul Hertelendy
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music
                                                                 Week of Feb. 27-March 6, 2003
                                                                  Vol. 5, No. 61
          Once in a blue moon, you run across a new young voice so radiant, so joyous, so pure, that you reach for the drawerful of superlatives and start scooping them out.
        Such was the surprise encounter with unheralded 30-year-old lyric soprano Galina Muradova from Moscow, singing a Monteverdi madrigal. Her voice is angelic, suffused with  the freshness of youth and the ectasy of the madrigal "Tempro la cetra"---four centuries old, but as new a discovery as if written yesterday.
        Like the string ensemble Moscow Academy of Ancient Music with which she appeared in San Francisco's tiny ODC Theater Feb. 26, she was making her West Coast debut, leaving the enthusiastic audience in her thrall. Though she attended both the Gnessin Music Academy as well as Vienna's Music Hochschule, and has sung at several European festivals, at this stage she doesn't even have a manager. But that should change rapidly, once this run concludes March 2 and the word gets around.
        This program billed as the Wired Strings Festival is a very ambitious and high-quality one, linking both the very old and very new. The 10-member Moscow Academy is also playing some contemporary Russian music under another title (Opus-Posth.) and doing it with polish and excitement, under the charged leadership of violinist, recording artist, and Artistic Director Tatiana Grindenko. Sharing the stage is the Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Band in cutting-edge crossover music from both the USA and Russia. Dresher, 51, is a long-standing electric guitarist whose ensembles, with amplification and processed sound, have rocked the halls here for nearly 18 years.
        The groups poured out a rich blend of premieres and near-premieres. Dresher's cello concerto "Unequal Temperament" spotlighted new-music virtuoso Joan Jeanrenaud as soloist in a minimalist, motoristic , bass-heavy piece using microtones (those notes falling between the notes in a piano keyboard). When the 23-minute work wasn't bogged down with the broad-brush sound typical of processed sound, fine lyrical moments emanated from the sextet.
        The band also brought forth two Russian works. Albina Stefanou's brief "Kinetic Movement" could be called Russian hoedown music whose catchy, syncopated rhythms recalled estampie compositions by Lou Harrison. Vladimir Nikolaev's "Lullaby for Jeff and Andy" is a raucous, wham-bam lullaby that would be unlikely to rock either Jeff or Andy to sleep. It's built around violin-cello exchanges (with Jeanrenaud and the no less remarkable Karen Bentley), punctuated with rude interjections by the bass clarinet and occasional synthesizer.
        Opus-Posth. brought Russians of their own with strict acoustic sound. Vladimir Martynov's "Autumn Ball of the Elves," almost as long as the cello concerto, had its own brand of evolved minimalism, with total consonance. Suggesting a threnody over a harsh ostinato, it tapered off till nature provided the perfect finale's obbligato---the pitter-pat of unexpected rain on the roof.
        It was that kind of night--the kind of night I won't soon forget.
        POSTLUDES---Russian musicologist Elena Dubinets, who is the catalyst credited in bringing east and west together here, leads a symposium on new music in both nations at the theater 4:30 p.m. March 2.
        WIRED STRINGS, new and old music from former adversary states. Paul Dresher Electro-Acoustic Band, plus West Coast debuts of the Russians of the Moscow Academy of Ancient Music (also Opus Posth), with soprano Galina Muradova. Nightly program changes. ODC Theater, San Francisco, through March 2. For ticket info: (415) 863-9834, or on line.
        ©Paul Hertelendy 2003
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        Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists, books (by authors of the region) and theater as well.
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