music

Finding their own sound. The New Century Chamber Orchestra delivered its latest concert series in halls around the Bay Area last weekend, culminating at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center on Sunday, Nov. 12. Since 2008 they have been led by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, a divine violinist who is also a forceful personality, and although they had impressive achievements under her leadership, their own cohesion was increasingly subsumed in her wake. Sunday’s concert...

Continue reading

Categories: music

A Harvest of reveries and nocturnes This year’s Sonic Harvest Festival evoked the turning of the season with songs set to autumn winds, the wintry distance of stars, and the dreams and nightmares of the young. Held Sunday, Nov. 5 at the Berkeley Piano Club, this celebration of chamber works for instruments and voice featured works by three composers and a librettist. [caption id="attachment_1126" align="alignleft" width="200"]...

Continue reading

Categories: music

“Chiaroscuro” is the name for pin-hole cameras and the dramatic black and white underpainting of Rembrandt’s oils. Italian for “light-dark,” it was also an apt name for a program held Saturday, Oct. 28 at the Piedmont Center for the Arts, an evening of works that cast light into the darkest parts of human nature. The  Circadian String Quartet teamed up with music historian Nicolas Hohmann to deliver three quartets woven together with storytelling and poetry. They performed...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Big names and rich substance With the Music Season fast upon us, Bay Area players are in their blocks and ready to sprint, the first heats of an Indian summer. Here is a short list of what is in store for us this fall. The San Francisco Symphony opens its doors with a splash on this very Thursday, Sept. 14, with a festive Gala. Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas combines forces with...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Holding our feet to the fire… For the last sixteen years, Goat Hall Productions has hosted the “Fresh Voices Festival,” a celebration of new works written expressly for voice in opera and musical theater. This year, their seventeenth, they displayed pieces by eight composers in performances in Vallejo, Albany and San Francisco. Titled “Feet First Into the Fire,” these works ran a gamut from playful to painful, and each brought a little...

Continue reading

Categories: music

Deep feeling and smooth expression An evening of explosive playing and heavenly sonorities made for another special evening at Music@Menlo, the Peninsula’s prized music festival. Last Monday, July 24, they held their fourth main concert in a series of seven, “In Joachim’s Orbit,” featuring chamber music at the height of German Romanticism. After three concerts devoted to the development of violin writing, here they widened their...

Continue reading

Categories: music