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Month: March 2023

A RARE FLOWERING IN WINE COUNTRY

A RARE FLOWERING IN WINE COUNTRY

ROHNERT PARK, CA—It’s a parttime orchestra, from a smaller city (Santa Rosa), having a conductor splitting his services with an out-of-state ensemble. So why the Santa Rosa Symphony, where you find yourself returning again and again, despite (in this case) a 90-minute drive to get there? Yes, the forward-looking SRS boasts varied programs regularly, including living composers along with the older masters. Its hall has not only fine acoustics but superb scenery—it’s among the loveliest concert halls of all if…

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WHEN IS MUSIC NOT MUSIC?

WHEN IS MUSIC NOT MUSIC?

OAKLAND, CA—-My professor taught a music course for non-majors and posed this very question, playing 3 or 4 recordings from concerts, each one fuzzier and less score-specific than the previous. I finally said no way to the last one, and now realize, years later, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. The 2022 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Raven Chacon, was inside the historic Mills College Concert Hall last week playing his own work entailing in part what he calls…

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UNIFIED DANCER DAZZLE

UNIFIED DANCER DAZZLE

Even in an evening of routine modern-ballet repertory works from recent seasons, you’re thunderstruck at the incredible proficiency of the S.F. Ballet dancers. In a piece like “Blake Works,” I found myself thoroughly irritated, mostly by the pop music lacking beats or focus. And yet the 20 or so dancers were so skilled and well-rehearsed, you thought they’d gone through training of a West Point drill team on the parade ground, then sped it up by four (an experience back…

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SHOOTING DOWN A RUSSIAN STAR

SHOOTING DOWN A RUSSIAN STAR

Composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who in his last 22 years was widely recognized as the cream of the crop among the Soviet Union’s composers, arguably turned out most of his significant, insightful music after the 1953 death of his nemesis, dictator Josef Stalin. Stalin had turned music criticism into a personal tool of repression which threatened either gulag confinement or execution to dissidents of any stripe. Dmitri’s later compositions of greatest note contained his repeated musical signature, D-S-C-H, which indicated via…

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WHAT OPUS WAS SHE PLAYING, ANYWAY?

WHAT OPUS WAS SHE PLAYING, ANYWAY?

When appearing at the piano, can anyone surpass the dazzling attire of the stellar Yuja Wang? Though a superstar in the classics, she and her attire comprised all the queries I got from men and women before the March 1 concert: What was her outfit this time around? Even an usher at Davies ventured to the subject with intrigue, “Well, we’ll soon see what she’s wearing, won’t we?” She dazzled, showing up in a gold-sequined bareback formal somewhere between haute…

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