Summer Plans!

All three summer concerts are in the planning stages.......getting close to finalizing!

But to let you know a bit......

June 28, a Monday night (we really are going for variety) the concert will be at St. Vincents Church in Petaluma. Gorgeous church! And big! We thought it would be fun to bring everyone up to the organ loft for half the concert...and then downstairs by the piano for the other half. Faure (songs, and..), Finzi (Bagatelles for clarinet and piano), De Fesch, Foote (I'll keep you guessing) and Fruhling.

Carol Menke, soprano; Marilyn Thompson, organ and piano; Nancy Hayashibara, piano; Roy Zajac, clarinet and Judiyaba, cello.

July 18....come to the coast!! We have a 4pm concert in the "church space" at Point Reyes Dance Palace. Lovely little wood lined space. Think Gabrielli, harpsichord, strings.....

And plan a day to get to the coast! Point Reyes is a cute little town, not far from Inverness and beaches. And restaurants for dinner after......

August 26, a Thursday evening, will be part of the Cinnabar Summer Music Festival in Petaluma. "H" is good.....from Handel to Harrison (that's Lou Harrison, a wonderful and very unusual string quartet.)

"D" photo

Charlie Lucke took this photo of the last piece on the "D" concert.

We were playing the Dohnanyi Piano Quintet (Gwyneth Davis was the page turner....sometimes the scariest job!)

More "E"s

Lots of "E"s!

Edward Elgar and Eric Ewazen! And the Eloquence String Quartet!

The quartet, made up of Peggy Brady and Rachelle Davis, violins, Beth Heid, viola and Gwyneth Davis can be checked out at Eloquencestringquartet.com. (pictures there too) They are playing the Elgar Quartet, a piece which isn't played nearly often enough.

But to crank up the volume a bit, Dan Norris will join them for a Quintet By Eric Ewazen, a composition teacher at Juilliard, who apparently went to Juilliard at the same time as Shinji.

about the "E" concert

Live composers are featured on the "E" concert!

San Francisco composer and bass player Shinji Eshima has written a very moving piece for bassoon, string quartet and optional buddhist monk. It's called Krapp's Endgame and refers to a Samuel Beckett play: Krapp's Last Tape, but also references an Allen Ginsberg's poem: Song.

It's a great poem. The beginning is:

The weight of the world

is love.

Under the burden

of solitude,

under the burden

of dissatisfaction

the weight,

The weight we carry

is love.

The players for this are; Greg Barber, bassoon, Peggy Brady and Rachelle David, violins, Beth Heid, viola and Judiyaba, cello.

Shinji also wrote a piece for Judiyaba and Gwyneth Davis called the Judiyabadabaduo, which we will play.

"D"....Again!

This Sunday, April 25th we will be repeating the "D" concert in San Francisco!

At 7:30 at the St. James church. A beautiful small church at 4620 California (between 8th and 9th Avenues) There is a suggested donation of $10 which also helps the church learning center.

"D"....a slavic romp

We visit the 1890's through the ears of Dohnanyi and Dvorak in this concert. The 2 main pieces were composed only 2 years apart. Dvorak wrote the American Quartet in 1893, while he was teaching in New York, and Dohnanyi wrote the Piano Quintet (his first published composition) in 1895. Both are big romantic pieces....great fun to play.

Nancy Hayashibara will be the pianist. Violinists are Heidi Wilcox and Beni Shinohara. Wayne Roden is the violist and Judiyaba the cellist.

This concert is a faculty concert at Sonoma State where Beni and Judiyaba are leading the string orchestra this semester. Tickets are $12 general, $8 seniors and students, and SSU students free.

The box office number is 664-2352.

C for Composers

Lots of composers!

Copland and Chopin are familiar to concert goers, but who are these other characters?

Cesar Cui is a name that might be familiar from music history courses. The "Russian Five" that we had to memorize were Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Balakirev and Cui. ( Mr. BBC when studying) But somehow we never heard any music by the last two! I still haven't heard any Balakirev but we found a lovely Barcarolle for cello and piano by Cui.

And Guillaume Connesson? The most modern composer on the program, he was born in 1970. Studied and now teaches in France and has commissions from major orchestras all over the world. Fortunately he also writes fun short chamber music pieces like the Disco Toccata. (probably too short to dance to)

Rebecca Clarke, American, born in 1886, and lived until 1979, composing, touring as a performer with a cellist, playing her own music and battling sexism. She once tied in a composition contest with Bloch but was not given the prize when it was known that she was a woman.

More coming about Henry Cowell, an early promoter of world music (born in Menlo Park 1897), prolific composer and mentor to John Cage, Lou Harrison, Charles Ives, and Harry Partch.