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SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Presents "Time Travails"
Saturday, October 13, 2018 at 8 pm

St. Mark's Lutheran Church
1111 O'Farrell Street, San Francisco, CA

PROGRAM

 

Kat Walsh is a bassoonist, violist, violinist, and composer based in Mountain View, CA. 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 JD from George Mason University in Arlington, VA, and when not behind a music stand is instead practicing law, in technology, IP, and internet policy.

Kat Walsh

Three Dances for Four Winds  notes

I. Gigue
II. Minuet
III. Reel

Harry Bernstein has been involved in San Francisco Bay Area music for many years as a composer, performer and teacher. He began his musical training on the trumpet, later learning the recorder as well as the Baroque the modern flutes. More recently, his life has been altered by the invasion of a viola. This occurred a few years after Bernstein began his association with City College. Why take up a stringed instrument in one's fifties? In his case, he took on the challenge of learning the viola in order to explore both orchestral and chamber music, and to learn how to write more effectively for strings. Not long after earning a D.M.A. in early music performance from Stanford University, he moved 30 miles north to San Francisco where he has lived ever since. He has studied composition with Jerry Mueller and has written vocal and instrumental music. Bernstein is co-founder of the Golden Age Ensemble, a duo presenting varied programs of instrumental and vocal music around the Bay Area and is a partner in Micro Pro Musica Press, SF, which offers music engraving, arranging and transcription services. He is currently active with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra (flute), the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony (viola), and that unpredictable composers' circle known as Irregular Resolutions. Bernstein is an instructor in both the Music and Older Adults Departments at City College of San Francisco, and also teaches privately.

Harry Bernstein

Quartetto Amabile   notes

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

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, and 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.

Alex Ness

Contrafacts  notes

I. Pretty Little Eyes
II. You You You
III. Me Me Me

Stardust is an anarchist, animist, queer/genderqueer, radical faerie composer living in the somewhat embattled and mythical sanctuary of San Francisco. Since 2014, Stardust's SFCCO offerings have included A la recherche des danses perdues, Home, Railway Sonata, Wiggle, and a theatre triptych of True of Voice Overture, True of Voice Entr'acte, and True of Voice Finale. Stardust also playwrights, most recently creating Lucia, a play about a lesbian anarchist revolutionary organizer of a group called "Mujeres Libres" ("Free Women") during the Spanish Civil War and Social Revolution. 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 & Gay Freedom Band, and of course the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Stardust plays the oboe and the English horn.

 Stardust

Home   notes

Nomads
Settlers
Builders
Residents
Disasters
Evicted
Refugees

intermission

 

Roberto Becheri received his Doctorate in Composition, at the Conservatory of Florence, Italy, and also a degree in Literature from the University of Bologna. His Composition studies were with Gaetano Giani Luporini, Carlo Prosperi, Armando Gentilucci, and Giacomo Manzoni. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatory of Florence. He also teaches musical analysis with the Guido D'Arezzo Foundation, in Arezzo. 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. Roberto 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).

Roberto Becheri

War Poems   notes

(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

Dr. Erling Wold is a composer and man-about-town. He recently premiered two large works, his Missa Beati Notkeri Balbuli Sancti Galli Monachi in St Gallen, Switzerland, and his solo opera Mordake for tenor John Duykers as part of the San Francisco International Arts Festival. He is currently working on a personal autobiographical theater piece detailing his corruption and death with the help of James Bisso, which may never be finished, and just finished a more tractable violin sonata for the Denisova-Kornienko duo in Vienna. He is best known for his operas, including Sub Pontio Pilato, an historical fantasy on the death and remembrance of Pontius Pilate, a chamber opera based on William Burroughs' early autobiographical novel Queer, and his critically acclaimed work A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil, based on the Max Ernst collage novel.

Erling Wold

She Who Is Alive   notes

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

speaker Click on the links to listen to the music. video Click on the links for video.

PERFORMERS
 

Piccolo / Flute
Bruce Salvisberg
Harry Bernstein
Martha Stoddard

Oboe
Stardust

Clarinet
Michael Kimbell

Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Kat Walsh


Trumpet
Tyler Graves

Horn
Bob Satterford

Trombone
Max Walker

Piano
Davide Verotta
Erling Wold

Percussion
Benedict Lim
Anne Szabla


Violin I
Kristen Kline

Violin II
Corey Johnson

Viola
Kat Walsh

Cello
Ariella Hyman

Bass
John Beeman

 

 
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").
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Mark Alburger Dr. Mark Alburger was the Music Director, Conductor, and founder of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Mark was an eclectic American composer known for his postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He served as the Music Director of Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera, Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, an award-winning ASCAP composer of concert music published by New Music, an Instructor in Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College, a Music Critic for Commuter Times, an author, musicologist, oboist, pianist, and recording artist.

Dr. Alburger studied oboe with Dorothy Freeman and played in student orchestras that were in association with George Crumb and Richard Wernick. He studied composition and musicology with Gerald Levinson, Joan Panetti, and James Freeman at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican College (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Roland Jackson at Claremont Graduate School (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley.
       Since 1987, he had lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he initially produced a significant amount of vocal music with assembled texts. His works from this period included the opera "Mice and Men" (1992), the crisis-madrigal collection L.A. Stories (1993), the rap sheet For My Brother For My Brother (1997), and the hieratic Passion According to Saint Matthew (1997).

Since 1997, Dr. Alburger had gridded and troped compositions upon pre-existent compositions ranging from world music and medieval sources to contemporaries such as George Crumb and Philip Glass. To that date, he had written 16 concerti, 7 masses and oratorios, 12 preludes and fugues, 20 operas, 6 song cycles, and 9 symphonies -- a total of 500 opus numbers amounting to more than 800 individual pieces.


Martha Stoddard, Associate Conductor earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at Humboldt State University and her Master of Music degree from San Francisco State University, where she studied flute, conducting and composition. She was named Program Director for the John Adams Young Composers Program at the Crowden Music Center in 2012 and has held the position of Artistic Director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra since 1997.She is Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Composers' Chamber Orchestra and Director of Instrumental Music at Lick-Wilmerding High School. Martha Stoddard Her most recent commissions include today's premiere and her Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano for the 2009 San Francisco Chamber Wind Festival at the San Francisco Conservatory. She has held the position of Artistic Director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra since 1997. Other recent conducting activities include engagements as Conductor for the John Adams Young Composers' Orchestration Workshops at the Crowden School, Musical Director for the operas Belfagor and Trap Door by Lisa Prosek, Guest Conductor for the San Francisco All City High School String Orchestra and the Santa Rosa Youth Symphony Summer Academy Orchestra. She has also served as an adjudicator for the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Santa Cruz Youth Symphony Concerto Competitions. Ms. Stoddard is founding member and director of ChamberMix, and is a featured performer on alto flute in John Bilotta's Shadow Tree (Capstone Records CPS-8787) and in John Thow's Cantico (Palatino label #1001) Marika Kuzma, conductor, and as conductor for Janis Mercer's, Voices (Centuar Recordings, CPS 2951).