MARK ALBURGER, 2018: October 13 - SFCCO

SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director

Time Travails
8pm, Saturday, October 13, 2018
St. Mark's Lutheran Church, 1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and Martha Stoddard, conducting

Program

Kat Walsh
      Three Dances for Four Winds (2018)
                I. Gigue
                II. Minuet
                III. Reel

Harry Bernstein

Quartetto Amabile (2014, rev. 2018)

                I. Allegro Marziale
                II. A Touch of Tango
                III. Moderato
                IV. Animato (Choro)

Alex Ness
       Contrafacts (2018)
                I. Pretty Little Eyes
                II. You You You
                III. Me Me Me

Stardust

Home (2018)

Nomads

Settlers

Builders

            Residents
            Disasters
            Evicted
            Refugees

Intermission

Roberto Becheri

War Poems (2018)

           (As a fanfare / As a parade march) - "They were summoned"
                    (excerpt from Till the Boys Come Home, 1914, Lena Guilbert Brown Ford)
                (As a romance) - "The train was full"
                    (excerpt from The Mobilization in Brittany, 1917, Grace Fallow Norton)
                (As a funeral march) - I Have a Rendezvous with Death, 1916, Alan Seeger)
                (As a lullaby / As a hymn) - "Keep the home fires burning"
                    (excerpt from Till the Boys Come Home, 1914, Lena Guilbert Brown Ford)

                Nikola Printz and Mark Alburger, Narrators

Erling Wold
        She Who Is Alive (2018)
                I. Overture
                II. April on the Island
                III. You are like a star...
                IV. April's Dream
                V. April's Apogee

                Nikola Printz, Angel of Music

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger                    Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold                    Associate Music Director
Martha Stoddard                    Associate Conductor

Piccolo
Harry Bernstein

Flute
Bruce Salvisberg
Martha Stoddard

Oboe
Stardust

Clarinet
Michael Kimbell

Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Kat Walsh

Trumpet
Tyler Graves

Horn
Bob Satterford

Trombone
Max Walker

Mezzo-Soprano
Nikola Printz

Piano
Davide Verotta
Erling Wold

Percussion
Benedict Lim
Anne Szabla

Violin I
Kristen Kline

Violin II
Corey Johnson

Viola
Kat Walsh

Cello
Ariella Hyman

String Bass
John Beeman

ROBERTO BECHERI received his Doctorate in Composition at the Conservatory of Florence, Italy, and also a degree in Literature from the University of Bologna. Composition studies were with Gaetano Giani Luporini, Carlo Prosperi, Armando Gentilucci, and Giacomo Manzoni. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatory of Florence. His compositions include works for theater and "microtheatrical" works, a musical genre he created, characterized by music purposefully bare of all elements of lyric opera. Becheri is currently collaborating on Italy's National Edition of the Works of Palestrina. He is the author of In attesa dell'alba, a treatise on the intersection of his various interests -- philosophy, aesthetics, history of religions, acoustics, and harmony.

One century after the cessation of World War I, WAR POEMS recalls the terrible events of that era, in which United States also participated. Selecting lyrics taken from three poems of American authors, the composer has created a dramaturgical path that evokes the call to arms, the death in war, and the hope of return. The music follows this contour, emphasizing the various moments of narration with different musical styles. The short initial fanfare of the horn, which opens the piece, is characterized by the intervals of semitone, fourth, and fifth -- foreshadowing the development of the entire work. There is also a quotation from the Medieval sequence Dies irae ("Day of wrath, that day which will dissolve the earthly world into ashes").

HARRY BERNSTEIN’s training at the University of Chicago and Stanford University was focused on musicology and the study of historical performance practice. These days, in addition to playing the flute, he balances his work teaching music at City College of San Francisco with a dedication to playing orchestral and chamber music, building his skills on the violin and viola, and occasionally writing original works, especially for strings. Several of his compositions have been performed by San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Even before joining the CCSF Music Department in 2006, he was inspired by taking a composition class with Jerry Mueller at the College in 2003, later collaborating on concerts with a group of musicians who had taken the same class. This led to participating in a composer cooperative known as Irregular Resolutions, and not long thereafter beginning participation with SFCCO. He is also a violist with the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony.

The title, QUARTETTO AMABILE, reflects the lighter character of its music. It was written as part of a group concert by members of the Irregular Resolutions, the San-Francisco based composer cooperative. IR members decided to present a program of music for string quartet at the Center for New Music in San Francisco in October, 2014. Two ensembles -- the Friction and Telegraph Quartets -- were hired to work with the composers and perform their music. My quartet was ultimately performed by the Telegraph Quartet, the same year that they won the Fischoff chamber music competition. This version of the quartet was also performed by SFCCO members in 2016.   The first movement is a march featuring an opening melody in G minor that contrasts a scale figure in dotted rhythms with a rising augmented fourth. After an initial modulation, the main melody returns in a later passage in A major, played dolce. The return to the home key is marked by a short fugato section. Unlike the energetic opening, the ending tapers off gently, in preparation for the more subdued opening of the following movement. "A Touch of Tango,” is a transcription in ternary form written for a composition class at CCSF 15 years ago. Each section has four beats per measure, starting in simple meter in a minor key using familiar rhythms and shifting in the second more-flowing section to a slower compound meter in a major key. The third movement is a transcription of a love song entitled 'Be Mine' written in 1981 to Bill, my future partner. It owes a debt to popular songs from the 1930s. An earlier transcription has been revised here for string quartet. This choice was influenced by having become an avid string player over the last dozen years. The finale, inspired by the lively and rhythmic Brazilian choro music, is in five sections. The first, third and fifth start with a syncopated accompaniment; all have an extended rhythmic tune followed by refrain. The second section consists of shorter figures and glissandi. The fourth breaks away from the prevailing sixteenth notes to a slower chordal passage in triple meter.

ALEX NESS grew up in San Francisco. In high school, he studied classical piano with William Wellborn and composition with Richard Festinger. He received an undergraduate music degree from Harvard, then spent a year in Varanasi, India, where he studied tabla with Ramchandra Pandit and voice with Ritwik Sanyal. Afterwards, Ness resided several years in New York as a composer and performer -- singing, playing synthesizers, and generating live video art in Glissando bin Laden; creating animated scores for the JACK Quartet and various other new music performers; and collaborating with Yoni Niv on a series of audiovisual compositions premiered at The Stone. Eventually he served as music director of Playground Sessions, a music-education software company, arranging contemporary pop songs and occasionally hanging out with Quincy Jones at his Bel Air estate. A few years ago, Ness moved back to San Francisco, where he tutors for a living and makes art for pleasure and insight.

For CONTRAFACTS, I wrote a piece of software that converts sound files -- in this case, pop music recordings -- into pieces for orchestra. I was inspired by the practice of other artists whose work involves this sort of translation: in the visual arts, Chuck Close, who translates photos into pixelated paintings; in music, the Austrian Peter Ablinger, who translates recordings of voices, field recordings, and noise into different sorts of quantized musical accompaniments. When I starting working, I had a technical idea in mind, but no idea how the results would sound. After I got the software up and running, I was able to listen to some mockups of the piece, and to focus on musical problems of counterpoint and balance. Those musical problems in turn revealed deeper expressive concerns: I wanted the live orchestral music to both complement and negate the sleek, artificial surfaces of the three pop songs chosen as sources. The result is a mashup of conventional and experimental aesthetics that reflects my disparate musical interests and experiences.

STARDUST is an animist radical faerie composer living in the somewhat embattled and mythical sanctuary of San Francisco. San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra offerings have included A la recherche des danses perdues, Railway Sonata, and a theatrical triptych True of Voice: Overture, Entr'acte, and Finale. He also writes plays, most recently co-creating the farce Ecopocalypse and fable Animal Factory Farm for the recent Climate Summit events in San Francisco. Other works include chamber music and symphonic music prepared for encouraging musician friends at events such as the Humboldt and Calcap Chamber Music Workshops and welcoming ensembles such as the Opus Project Orchestra, the Golden Gate Symphony, the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Freedom Band, and, of course, SFCCO.

HOME explores the evolution of the concept of "home" and the reality of what it means to live in the contemporary world. In the USA, conservative estimates report that more than 500,000 people live without homes, a quarter of these children. Due to the financial crisis of 2008, 1.2 million households in the US lost their homes. Worldwide, 68.5 million refugees have been forced from their residences as a result of political crises, and the World Bank reports that another 143 million people may soon become climate refugees.

KAT WALSH is a bassoonist, violist, and composer based in Novato, California. She has performed with groups including the Pan American Symphony Orchestra, Orlando Opera, Central Florida Lyric Opera, and Southern Winds, and currently plays with a variety of casual ensembles around the Bay Area. Walsh has a BA in Music from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, and when not behind a music stand is instead practicing technology and internet law.

THREE DANCES FOR FOUR WINDS, for woodwind quartet, is a trio of contrapuntal dances. The suite starts with a gigue, featuring a theme carried by the clarinet. The ensuing minuet entrusts the principal melody to the oboe. The final dance is, atypically, an Irish reel, starting out in a traditional ABAB format, with bassoon and flute taking the lead, and then combining the two main themes in counterpoint.

ERLING WOLD has written quite a few operas, the last of which -- Rattensturm -- on the sinking of the Szent István and the arc of the First World War, premiered in Austria this summer to tears and standing ovations. His day job is a mathematician of sorts, working in musical signal-processing and computational geometry, with a Paul Erdős collaborative distance number of 4. Besides the film-opera excerpted here tonight, he is also writing a violin-cello double concerto for Elena Denisova and Alenka Piotrowicz. Wold is a renowned sybarite who spends his evenings in quiet contemplation of his Empress. He is the second person in the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra to win an Emmy.

SHE WHO IS ALIVE is a suite from the in-preproduction film-opera adaptation of Robert Harris’s surreal fascist thriller, a death drive dream gliding through the residual terror of the twentieth century. We find ourselves on a tropical beach, the sun setting, April Jergen riding her horse. Meanwhile, in the National Homeland, the Polemarch Rorman sings a poem he has written to his young boyfriend. His boyfriend is full of disdain. Eventually, April has a dream and fulfills her destiny for the National Homeland.

DONATIONS:

Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold

Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
Anne Baldwin
George & Connie Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Kenneth Johnson
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta

Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
J.D. Deaver
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Gail Hoben
Ann-Marie Hogan
Brian Holmes
Marilyn Hudson
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
Gail Piestrup
Elizabeth Powell
Roberta Robertson
James Schrempp
Stardust
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc

Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Kent & Catherine Smith
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Robert & Frances Stine

Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater

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San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra is a multi-talented group of composer-performers from the San Francisco Bay Area who seek to define the sound of New Music in San Francisco.

SFCCO's concert series exemplifies both the diversity of its members' music as well as the unique threads which bind these composers together, creating a sound that is truly San Franciscan. SFCCO endeavors to expand the public interest in new music through concerts, recording projects, and building strong relationships with its community.

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Erling Wold's Fabrications
629 Wisconsin Street
San Francisco, CA 94107

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***

Another superb show!

200th

day

summer,

high

down

3 to 84

(Pinole /

Berkeley,

68;

San

Francisco,

64), dropping Harriet off at a Fresh Voices XVIII (8pm, Saturday, November 3, Community Music Center, 544 Capp Street, SF) rehearsal at Center for New Music,