music

Vivid colors in Marin… The New Century Chamber Orchestra opened their 25th season with a lively program in four concerts around the Bay Area. I heard them in Marin on Sunday, Sept. 18, and it was a study in coloration. This ensemble of twenty strings, led by virtuoso violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg for the past nine years, will be shopping for a new Artistic Director this year. But in the meantime they are celebrating one last year of flings together, and...

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Three composers and an American lineage. In June of 2000, Michael Tilson Thomas created and led an American Mavericks festival with the San Francisco Symphony, with 14 separate programs over two-and-a-half weeks. That festival was a celebration of the diversity and exploration of American composers and helped to cement a movement that defies easy classification. ...

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Harvesting the fruits of fall – a classical calendar As the chill of summer fog gives way to Indian summer, our Bay Area musicians are revving up for the start of a new season. Here are some promising concerts in September that will get you in the mood for the marathon events of a hot October. On Sept. 7 the San Francisco Symphony opens their season with a sizzling gala, a fundraiser for their many outreach programs that includes...

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The end of a Napa summer, and of a cycle Music in the Vineyards, Napa Valley’s long running chamber music festival, closed last weekend with the complete Beethoven cycle. The Ariel quartet performed all 16 of these masterly quartets over five days, held at five different vineyards around the Valley. Each concert combined early, middle and late quartets for a deeper view into a mind that reinvented Western music. On Saturday, Aug. 20, I got to visit the Jamieson...

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In 1986 Allan Pollack, Susan Waterfall and Walter Green turned their vision for a North Coast music festival into reality. Drawing on their Bay Area musician friends, particularly from the SF Symphony and SF Opera Orchestra, their festival was an instant success. Set in a large striped tent on the headlands of Mendocino looking out over the ocean, they eventually moved into an even larger tent, which, at 16,000 square feet can comfortably hold a substantial orchestra and chorus along with...

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…and from the mountains to the valleys. Last week the Piedmont Post ran a preview of several of our local and coastal music festivals. Today we turn our attention to the mountains and the valleys. The Bear Valley Music Festival opened its doors in 1967 in the Stanislaus National Forest, a placid summer vale that was once better known as a winter ski destination. Originally a respite for classical musicians, this festival has...

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Categories: music