Maria Mikheyenko, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, is actively involved in bringing Russian repertoire to audiences of all backgrounds. She has sung Mussorgsky�s Songs and Dances of Death with the Russian Chamber Orchestra of Marin, was a guest artist at the 2nd Annual Russian Confederation of San Francisco, and in January 2005 performed An Evening of Russian Romance with pianist Alexander Katsman at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Ms. Mikheyenko received her BM in voice from the University of Michigan, where she studied with renowned tenor George Shirley, and completed her graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in 2002, where she studied with Sylvia Anderson. She now studies with Victoria Rapanan.

Aurelio Viscarra has performed in the San Francisco bay area for over 20 years. He has been a part of the Fresh Voices programs since their inception and has been seen in Goat Hall productions including Amahl and the Night Visitors and The Fantasticks. He has also appeared with Cinnabar Theater, Berkeley Opera, Eugene Opera (OR), Not Quite Opera, George Coates Performance Works, and LA Opera Theater.

Micah Epps earned his Bachelor of Music Degree at the University of Arizona. His experience ranges from opera to classical and sacred choral music. He has performed as soloist in such groups as the San Mateo Masterworks Chorale (European Tour soloist), San Francisco Symphony Chorus; and was Mozart Requiem soloist in Hermosillo, Mexico. His operatic roles include U.S. premieres with local composers such as David Conte in Firebird Motel and Erling Wold in Sub Pontio Pilato. In addition, he has created the roles of Eumolpus in Lisa Scola Prosek's opera Satyricon and Creon in Mark Alburger's Antigone.

Chamber Set is a collection of four compositions by Harry Bernstein.

Duo for Alto Flute and Viola
I feel that the violin has generally been exploited and explored by composers more fully than its larger cousin, the viola. The alto flute is treated more often as a color instrument than its smaller cousin, the orchestral C flute. While the reasons for this situation may be practical and understandable, I decided to unite these soulful voices in an equal-voiced duet, with an emphasis on their lower registers. The instruments interact here in an almost conversational manner. This performance is a premiere.

Duet for Zack
During this academic year I've been participating in UCSF's Art for Recovery project by writing to Zack B., a student from Marin County. Zack writes music and plays both sax and drums. He started our correspondence by sending me a brass quintet he had written to be performed for his 13th birthday last year. I wrote Duet for Zack for Two Equal Saxophones, which was intended as encouragement for him to continue the exchange of music that we had begun. The first performance was given on February 26, 2006, with SFCCO's oboist, Philip Freihofner and myself on flute. Multi-instrumentalist Michael Cooke plays soprano saxophone with Philip on tonight's concert.

If All the World Was Apple Pie
This trio in aba' form for two violins and viola was part of a projected set of pieces for strings inspired by Mother Goose poems. Two of the movements were performed in San Francisco by members of the Marigold String Quartet at City College of San Francisco in 2003.

The version of his short poem from the _Annotated Mother Goose_ reads as follows:
If all the world was apple pie
And all the sea was ink;
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What could we do for drink?

Color Study
Several months ago, I learned that the SFCCO would have three flutes playing in this concert and that all the performers play alto flute. I took the opportunity to write a simple piece to explore the sonority (or color) of three alto flutes. The bass part (heard today on the cello) almost seems to be playing a fourth flute part at times, while at other times it moves deeper in the bass register. This performance is a premiere.

SUITE ("SOLAR") For Oboe, Piano, and Percussion, Op. 2, by Dr. Mark Alburger, dates from 1975, and was expanded in 2005 on a grid derived from a reverse usage of George Crumb's Makrokosmos, Volume I. The work is a journey from the sun to the outer solar system and back, identified over the course of a year, with character designations in the tradition of Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and Crumb. Other musical passengers include Webernian atonality, modal naitivity, Cowell clusters, minimalist substitutions, echoes of Mice and Men and Business As Usual, Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 4, Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9, Igor Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat, Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Procession of Nobles, Edgar Varese's Ionization and Hyperprism, Harold Arlen's The Wizard of Oz, Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, Arnold Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, American football cheers, the Wheaties song, children's taunts, the Gregorian hymn O Come O Come Emanuel, Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 3, Guido d'Arezzo's Hymn to St. John (the original solfege song "ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la"), and 70's rock.

Quartet for Oboe, Clarinet, French Horn and Bassoon, by Philip Freihofner, began as a score for a Russian Silent Film, director Boris Barnet's 1926 romantic comedy: "Devushka S Korobkoi" (The Girl with the Hat Box). Composition started Nov. 2005, with the goal of performing in the 2006 SF Silent Film Festival, but the project had to be dropped early in 2006 due to funding difficulties. The material was then recast into its present form. The music is strongly influenced by Russian ballet and folk music, with its vigorous rhythms, frequent melodic fourths and modal shifts, and by the charm and humor in the film itself. Given the nature of film scoring, the themes did not fall squarely into standard forms, resulting in some unexpected twists and turns. There's a 4/4 section in the Waltz, a stretto morphs into a tango during the Fugue, and the Marchers get rather distracted, starting and stopping, then taking off in different directions. The Coda ends on a somber note. Ilya, who has just met and fallen for the fiery-tempered Natasha, loses her in a crowd while disembarking from a train and wonders if he will ever see her again. Similarly, the composer wonders if the he will see the resumption of this film-scoring project.

Flute Concerto: I—Flute and Drum, by Alexis Alrich, was commissioned by Ilse Maier, flutist, and Gabriel Sakakeeny, conductor of the Cotati Philharmonic. This is the first movement of five. The entire piece will be played in the 2006-2007 season by the Cotati Philharmonic. Drum with flute has been a classic combination probably since the dawn of music. I wanted to contrast this timeless idea with the sophistication of modern flute playing. To achieve this effect I have combined pentatonic scales (ancient) with chromatic harmony (arguably more modern). After a short introduction, the piece is based on two melodies, one quick and syncopated, one slow.

In this work Loren sought to blend the music of San Francisco’s different historical periods and places with his own impressions. A combination of authenticity and imagination. When finished, this series will contain 18 movements.

1. Ohlone Song
The Ohlone were a highly evolved and virtuous people made up of over forty separate tribes speaking many different languages, who lived harmoniously in the San Francisco Bay Area for many thousands of years. The Yelamu were the original people of San Francisco. Ohlone songs were often accompanied by clapper sticks, shell shakers, bone whistles and flutes. This music was inspired by their traditional vocal songs, though I chose to use a more common Native American flute, which is quite different from the flutes played by the Ohlone.

2. Ave Maria Yerba Buena
In the late 1700’s the settlement of Yerba Bunea was established by the Spanish. The inspiration for this piece came from the Mission San Francisco De Assisi, later known as the Mission Dolores. Built in 1776, the mission and the surrounding Spanish town marked the beginning of the decline of the Ohlone, and the end of an era. As the settlement grew, the original people, animals and the ecology of the Bay Area was changed forever. One of the
positive things that the missionaries and settlers brought to the new world was their music.
This melody is from an anonymous song sung at dawn in praise for the Virgin Mary.

3. Gold Rush
In the beginning of 1849 the town that had become San Francisco was the home to 700 people. Within a year the gold rush had brought the population up to 40,000. Dreamers, adventurers, the hopeful, the rich, the poor, the honest, and the crooked, poured into the city from all over the world in search of a new life. The common music of this period included banjo, fiddle, and guitar.

4. Dragon Gate
By the late 1850’s the building boom throughout the west had brought thousands of Chinese laborers to San Francisco, and Chinatown became the largest Chinese settlement in the United States. A city within a city. China in the middle of San Francisco. The entrance to Chinatown was named Dragon Gate. The two instruments featured here are the erhu and the pipa. Comparable only slightly to the western violin, the erhu has a beautiful sound that is very eastern and completely unique.