POSTMODERN DANCE, 3D, & MAKE-BELIEVE ATOMS

POSTMODERN DANCE, 3D, & MAKE-BELIEVE ATOMS

3D viewing of movies is nowadays commonplace, just as a “cutting edge” idea of “the body” is commonplace in postmodern dance culture. But what happens when postmodern dance embraces 3D technology? The Company Wayne McGregor, from England, tries to answer this question with its production of Atomos (2013). Wayne McGregor (b. 1970) is the founder of the company and the choreographer of Atomos, and he has acquired considerable international acclaim for dances that involve the use of video and digital…

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RUSSIAN VOICES, FROM CELESTIAL TO DESPONDENT

RUSSIAN VOICES, FROM CELESTIAL TO DESPONDENT

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An Uncommon, Unaccompanied Chorus Give credit to the Swede Ragnar Bohlin, who moonlights leading his Cappella SF when he’s not leading the prize-winning S.F. Symphony Chorus. What’s more, with Cappella he resurrects choral rarities rarely encountered elsewhere. It’s a gourmet paradise in voice. This time it was a spectrum of unaccompanied pieces we rarely hear outside the Russian Orthodox Church. And he appended the dark perspectives of modern-day composers who were rankling under the repression and bleakness of Soviet Communism….

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SEX RULES THE OPERA STAGE

SEX RULES THE OPERA STAGE

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The Raw English Hit ‘Powder Her Face’ in Oakland By Paul Hertelendy  artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance  Week of Jan. 6-13, 2016 Vol. 18, No. 11 OAKLAND—Thomas Adès’ opera “Powder Her Face” is a devastating social critique condemning women’s inequality as well as the excesses of the Idle Rich, based on fact. Or, it’s a two-hour exercise in audience titillation showing various freelance sexual practices, some of them more natural than others. Take…

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CHAMBER MUSIC’S ORNITHOLOGICAL CORNUCOPIA

CHAMBER MUSIC’S ORNITHOLOGICAL CORNUCOPIA

Farallon Quintet with a New Cannon Aviary The unusual Farallon Quintet reminds us there are more than 600 compositions for clarinet and string quartet—precisely Farallon’s personnel. Not too caught up in the past, the SF-based Faralloners like to feast on new music. And to launch the new year in style, while musicians elsewhere seemed to be left gnawing on turkey leftovers ad infinitum, letting halls go dark, these players tightened their belts carried off two world premieres at the Old…

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TAUT CULTURE-CLASH DRAMA AT BERKELEY REP

TAUT CULTURE-CLASH DRAMA AT BERKELEY REP

Berkeley Rep is staging “Disgraced” by Ayad Akhtar, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. It is a drama that exposes the prejudices and myths held by everyone in the small cast (five actors playing two couples and a teenage nephew). The couples represent 4 different ethnic groups, and the nephew, like the main character Amir, is Muslim. The play opens in the chic upper East Side Manhattan apartment of Emily and Amir. Emily (Nisi Sturgis) is the blond, wasp-y…

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STRIKING GOLD IN HEGGIE’S NEW VOCAL WORK

STRIKING GOLD IN HEGGIE’S NEW VOCAL WORK

“The Work at Hand,” an unusual song cycle by San Francisco composer Jake Heggie, shows him to be among the most sensitive and romantic creative artists of our time. The 20-minute work is unorthodox, sung by a mezzo with accompaniment on cello and piano. Extended passages for the instrumentalists separate the three poems dealing with end of life, but with consummate restraint and introspection. There is something hauntingly beautiful about the intermezzi, vacillating between minor and major modes, tender and…

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RIGHTING RODERICK IN POE’S SHORT STORY, USHERED IN

RIGHTING RODERICK IN POE’S SHORT STORY, USHERED IN

Getty’s ‘Usher’ Opera in SFO Double Bill Gordon Getty, who terms himself a 19th -century man, shakes hands with a long-gone Edgar Allan Poe in his mind-trip opera “Usher House” (2014), given its US premiere at the S.F. Opera Dec. 8. Getty and Poe walk the tantalizing lines between reality, fantasy, life and death distilled out of the nebulous outlines of Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This is an engaging one-act opera of spooks, cadavers…

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CHANTICLEER PERENNIALS FOR CHRISTMAS

CHANTICLEER PERENNIALS FOR CHRISTMAS

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Spotlighting Brilliance of a One-Time Wonder By Paul Hertelendy artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance Week of Dec. 12-23, 2015 Vol. 18, No. 33 STANFORD, CA—Heaping wreaths and encomiums on the elite Chanticleer chorus’ Christmas program for the 37th time? No—pointless and repetitive. Let’s learn instead from the once-in-a-lifetime burst of genius coming to ordinary folk like you or your neighbor——folks such as Franz Biebl, who wrote the beloved signature piece “Ave Maria” and…

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WOMEN VIBRANTLY AT THE FOREFRONT

WOMEN VIBRANTLY AT THE FOREFRONT

BERKELEY—With her niche securely in place, Berkeley Symphony Music Director Joana Carneiro is diversifying the repertoire, presenting work of the two most prominent (active) European women composers this fall. There’s an audacity and imagination at play there, avoiding tired programs and rep duplications with other orchestras. Also her orchestra is sounding better than ever as she continues to hone the creativity, six years after her appointment here. The audacity was palpable when she led off with a dozen players scattered…

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MEDIEVAL NUREMBERG BARGING INTO THE 19TH CENTURY

MEDIEVAL NUREMBERG BARGING INTO THE 19TH CENTURY

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Wagner’s Opulent ‘Meistersinger’ in Vivid Dimensions The San Francisco Opera got its act together in more ways than one for Wagner’s “Meistersinger” opera, serving up music theater instead of the old-fashioned static sequence of singers. Furthermore, if any one could tone down the overachieving brass section in the pit, we’d be close to perfection for this massive 5½ hours show. This marks the eighth time since 1960 that the SFO has presented the quasi-historical work. Having seen/heard each reprise, I…

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