By Kimberly Chun

I recommend taking some cult-cha with your cold cereal -- it’ll make the pre-Thanksgiving/Black Friday mania go down easier. More fun stuff than we could fit into print.

Ty Segall and Culture Kids
The raging Goldie ‘09 winner lets it fly with the buskable, combustible Bay Area noise makers. With the Baths. Sat/14, 9 p.m., $7. Amnesia, 853 Valencia, SF. (415) 970-0012.

Turks
The Oakland combo likes its tempos convulsive and screams pitched a few notches above the deep, dark pit of post-punk hell. With Rats Eyes and La Guardia. Sat/14, 9:30 p.m., $6. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923.

Continue reading "Sonic Reducer Overage: Grant Hart, 'In C,' Flobots, Talk Normal, and more" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everybody panic. Don't worry, electronic-symphonica mastermind Mason Bates, who I rave about in this week's issue, isn't gonna freak peeps out. But seriously, do not miss the premier of his orchestral suite for full orchestra and laptop, The B-Sides, which he'll be performing for three nights with the ever-game SF Symphony, Wed/20, Fri/22, Sat/23. After Friday night's performance (free with ticket!) you'll get ushered into a really cool secret space by Davies Symphony Hall for an afterparty, featuring Mason's Mercury Soul project, which kicks ambient-like trip-hop ass and will feature himself behind the decks, as well as some live, avant-garde surprises (and hottie conductor Benjamin Shwartz, *swoon*). If you haven't been to the symphony, or if you're in the mood for something spectacular oracular, this is the time to go.

Here's two views of Mason, aka DJ Masonic, at Carnegie Hall with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra in April, debuting the "Wharehouse Medicine" portion of The B-Sides.

The balcony view, complete with trippy visuals:

and here's from right down in the fray (I'm dying to know what the tiny grand piano behind his is for! Hello, Carl Stalling?) Note the dramatic use of drum pad:

I would be totally, regrettably remiss if I didn't also pump Bates' co-performer on the program, the heartbreakingly talented and just all around fierce Yuja Wang, who'll be performing Prokofiev's Piano Concerto #2, which at around the seven-minute-mark will honestly start to kill you with beauty. Girl's got skills.

Here's her performing at Carnegie Hall. Um, hi hotness.

Also featured: the majestically haunting, almost-4AD-foretelling Fourth Symphony by Sibelius, who's all the rage among young turk composers these days.

Mason Bates, Yuja Wang, and the SF Symphony
Wed/20, Fri/22, Sat/23
8 p.m., $35–$130
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness
(415) 552-8000
www.sfsymphony.org

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Posted by SFBG at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Text and photos by Ariel Soto

Walking confidently on stage and decked out in tradition Japanese garb, the Yoshida Brothers took over the stage at Yoshi's SF in the Fillmore -- they'll be performing there until May 16th. The Yoshida brothers play the shamisen, a square shaped guitar like instrument with only three stings that twangs and resonates long after the stings have been plucked.

Continue reading "Live Shots: Yoshida Brothers strum up Yoshi's" »

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Posted by SFBG at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Dina Maccabee

Entertain whatever stereotypes you will about tango as a relic of an openly macho era: tango in San Francisco is alive. Okay, and kicking.

You might envision a wacky, tacky ballroom competition — but not so rapido says Tango No. 9's founder and violinist Catharine Clune, whose explorations over the last decade have unearthed what she calls "the many faces of tango." With trombonist Greg Stephens, pianist Joshua Raoul Brody, accordionist Isabel Douglass, and newest member Zoltan Lundy singing the Argentine blues, Tango No. 9 revels in tango's many approaches to music, to dancing, and to life. And it's not alone. "There's an underground squadron of tango dancers, ranging from their 20s to their 60s," Clune says. "You can dance tango every night in the Bay Area. It's in these crazy little back rooms you didn't know existed, and that's where we've practiced our chops." As social dancing, which she notes hasn't been a mainstream American cultural movement since the '50s, tango is "something people seem to want."

Professional dancers will be on hand at Noe Valley Ministry to perform the sultry moves, but if you only ogle los bailarines, you'll miss half the fun, or half the pain. "If you can lose anything, from a horse race to a heart, they talk about it," Clune says of the moving and theatrical side of tango's songs — for listening, not just getting down at the local milonga. In a set that traverses the genre, from its roots to the obscure late works of Astor Piazzola, the group performs the first "sentimental" tango, Carlos Gardel's inspirational rendition of Pascual Contursi and Samuel Castriota's "Mi Noche Triste," which set fire to an international phenomenon mourning lost love and tragedy. Like, Lundy says, "being left by a woman who was also your prostitute."

TANGO NO. 9 Sat/2, 8:15 p.m., $16-$18. Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez, SF. (415) 282-2317. www.tangonumber9.com

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Posted by SFBG at 07:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Woof! Har Mar Superstar's "DUI."

You're stormy, San Francisco - yet you still partay like no other city. Here's even more worthy music - more than we could squeeze into print.

Har Mar Superstar
Sean Tillmann, Sean Na Na - hey whatever your name is: we know you got the stuff to write songs for the Cheetah Girls. With the New Trust and the Limousines. Wed/5, 8 p.m., $12. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. (415) 861-2011.

M. Ward
She and Him? No, him! The former South Bay teacher has made a pretty swell name for himself - though I'd love from him to break out of his Hold Time (Merge) shell.
Wed/5, 8 p.m., $29.50. Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF. (415) 563-6504.

Color me evocative: Christopher Willits' "Colors Shifting."

Ghostly International Live
Michna, Tycho, Christopher Willits, and other phantoms party like it’s the label’s 10-year anniversary. With the Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko, Deru, and Eliot L. Fri/6, 10 p.m. doors, $15-$20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. (415) 820-9669.

Continue reading "Sonic Reducer Overage: Ghostly, M. Ward, Har Mar Superstar, and so much more" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Text by Nicole Gluckstern, photos by Morlock E.

It’s a good thing so many of the gents are equipped with vintage aviator goggles this year, since otherwise it would seem they’d run the risk of getting their eyes poked out—whether by parasol, peacock feather, or plunging décolletage. It’s the ninth annual Edwardian Ball -- a two-day affair that took place this past weekend -- and like most excuses to get all gussied up in San Francisco, the masses have appointed themselves with gusto. Though most of the costumes here are decidedly more Deadwood than dead and gone, more sumptuous than spooky, the spirit of patron saint Edward Gorey still wafts faintly through the proceedings like a clammy graveyard breeze. Black-and-white cutouts of Gashlycrumb Tinies adorn the walls along with cunning Paxton Gate-style dioramas of dressed-up rodent skeletons, while the Jules Verne-like “Goreyscope” offers microscopic evidence of the haunting qualities of Gorey’s curious bibliography.

A Jill Tracy accompanist

Friday Night at the Edwardian World Faire, headlining act geek-girl cello combo Rasputina sets toes to tapping with such “classics” as “Hunter’s Kiss”, “Watch TV”, and “Saline the Salt Lake Queen”, while upstairs in the fine arts gallery, fairies are being robotically squeezed to make libations (at least that’s what the sign says. Too bad January is my libation-free month, no freshly-squeezed fairy for me).

Jill Tracy (at keyboard)

Downstairs at the “fair”, much steam engine activity is on display thanks to the Kinetic Steam Works, and fabulous trinkets are for sale, mainly in the “jewelry made from sprung watch cogs, and studded leather utility belts” five-and-diamond vein.

Continue reading "Ballin' - Edwardian style" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This is in from Merle Haggard's people:

"Merle Haggard arrived home five days after having lung surgery in a Bakersfield hospital last Monday morning, Nov. 3. It was discovered during a previous biopsy that he had non-small cell lung cancer, which has a far better cure rate than the small (oat) cell cancer. At this time, tests show that they were able to eliminate the affected tissue when they removed the upper lobe of his right lung. Upon waking up after the surgery, Hag opened his eyes, yodeled and smiled. Haggard’s post-operation progress was so rapid and successful he was discharged on Saturday night, Nov. 8.

“'Due to the surgeon, Dr. Peck, the Tylenol pushers on the fourth floor of the Memorial Hospital, and most of all, my wife Theresa, I’m feeling good…better and better each day,' says Haggard. 'If not for the love and wisdom of my wife, I might not be around today.'

"Haggard adds, 'I’d sure like to know who controls the largest shares of Tylenol. God forbid it be the oil companies!'

"Mr. Haggard and his family are respectfully asking for privacy at this time. Your prayers and good thoughts would be very much appreciated."

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There will be "Popcorn." Radiohead player Jonny Greenwood's "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" will get its West Coast premiere in SF, courtesy of the Wordless Music Series, right before his group appears at Outside Lands music fest in Golden Gate Park. This press release came over the transom yesterday:

"On August 21, 2008, New York’s intrepid Wordless Music Series concludes its '07-'08 season with a surprise San Francisco debut, reprising the centerpiece of the inaugural Wordless Music Orchestra concerts from last January by presenting the West Coast premiere of "Popcorn Superhet Receiver."

"The night before Radiohead takes the stage at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Wordless Music will feature composer and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood's Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra. Maestro Benjamin Shwartz, resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, will lead the Magik*Magik Orchestra in a program of music by Arvo Pärt, a major influence on the music of Greenwood and Radiohead, along with Bay Area composers Fred Frith, Mason Bates, and John Adams.

Continue reading "Radiohead Jonny Greenwood's 'Popcorn' gets its West Coast premiere in SF" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Charlemagne Palestine
From Etudes to Cataclysms
(Sub Rosa)

By Erik Morse

Charlemagne Palestine (real name: Chaim Moshe Tzadik Palestine) has long been an unrecognized co-star in the avant-celebrity tradition of minimalism. Born in Brooklyn and working alongside his more famous brethren for decades, Palestine blends entrancing keyboard intervals with stylized performance and mythmaking. In his newest two-CD collection of compositions, From Etudes to Cataclysms, the musician gets second billing to the unique piano he plays.

Christened the Borgato by its eponymous inventor, a musician from Padua, the instrument consists of two grand piano bodies, constructed vertically, with the first containing all 88 keys and sitting at normal playing height while the second contains only the lower 37 notes and rests near the feet. Having previously learned to perform on the carillon, a medieval bell instrument played with the fists and feet, Palestine was reportedly eager to test his dexterity on the mutant machine. Recorded over three days at the Church of Saint Apollinare Monticello in Lonigo, Italy, the end product is a 140 minute tour de force of mindful possibilities and mindless boredom.

The first disc (“Etudes”) consists almost entirely of Palestine’s exercises with repetition and formality as he builds enormous ghostly overtones from long periods of high- and low-end trilling. From the opening “super high tones” to the closing “tritone octave ½”, there is an ongoing struggle, in both performance and perception, between obscure mathematical process and arcane artistic license. The tension builds further and further as the individual notes blur into less delineated “clusters” of sound without harmonic resolution. Drones, secreted beneath the surface sounds, phase in and out with a spectral menace.

As with most extended minimalist compositions, there are various levels of intention and thus appreciation simultaneously at work. While the abstractionist and musicologist might luxuriate in so-called “microtonal” resonances spiriting between the Western intervals of the piano, casual listeners may simply gape at Palestine’s superhuman playing endurance. Regardless, the listener hangs on to this sonic maelstrom half in suspense and half in stupor. The hypnotic effect is not very different from that produced by LaMonte Young’s The Well Tuned Piano (Gramavision, 1988) or the film soundtracks of Ligeti or Donaggio. And most of the pieces do have a strong kinaesthetic component to them, eschewing the aural for a chimerical cinematography.

The second disc exudes similar hypnomonotony but the pianist’s trills reside more on the lower end as he seems to take full advantage of the “bass” piano at his feet. In “Cataclisma 2” and “Cataclisma 3," the use of tension and resolution is particularly effective, again invoking the nocturnal soundtrack moods of Eyes Wide Shut or any of a dozen “metaphysical” crime films. By “Cataclisma 4," a behemoth piece clocking in at nearly 20 minutes, the divisions between tracks seem arbitrary or beyond a dilettante’s comprehension. Unfortunately, the recording fails to present the overall image of a Charlemagne Palestine recital, where the performer in question often surrounds himself with stuffed teddy bears, books, and aged cognac. Such knick-knacks probably connote a humor and playfulness that is sorely missing in the heavy intellectual conceits of From Etudes to Cataclysms. Nonetheless, for followers of the current avant-garde, the work of this renegade pianist has few equals.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We loves us some Michael Tilson Thomas -- we better, because she's everywhere, darling -- but it must be hard to live and gesticulate passionately for the San Francisco Symphony in the shadow of the great MTT. It's not a competition! I know! Still, it's a treat to see SFS program a night specifically dedicated to some of the other stellar conducting talents it retains, especially for a total symphony queen like moiself.

Three great classical (bow-tied) tastes: Gaffigan, Bohlin, and Shwartz

The three-day "SFS Conductors on the Podium" series will see Associate Conductor James Gaffigan (who blew me and several thousand peeps away in Dolores Park a while back, conducting the 1812 Overture), Resident Conductor and total cutie Benjamin Shwartz, and fierce Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin take the stage for a nice, slightly challenging change.

Benjamin Shwartz, making beautiful music

Particularly interesting will be the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage's jazzy-sounding Three Asteroids: The Torino Scale, Juno, Ceres, conducted by Schwartz, and the sure-to-be-spectral a capella double-choir performance of Poulenc's Figure humaine -- a haunting setting of Paul Eluard's poems about war and spirituality, conducted by Bohlin. Gaffigan conducts Bartok's seldom-heard Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, and the Thursday and Saturday programs will also feature Prokofiev's ragged, fiery Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, also conducted by Gaffigan and featuring SFS concertmaster and string-whiz Alexander Barantschik. Should be a revelation.

SFS Conductors on the Podium
Thursday, June 5 at 2:00pm
Friday, June 6 at 6:30pm
Saturday, June 7 at 8:00pm
$25-$125
Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org

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Posted by Marke B. at 08:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SKYPHONE
Avellaneda
(Rune Grammofon)

By Erik Morse

The Danish trio of Thomas Holst, Keld Dam Schmidt, and Mads Bodker has deepened the exotic secrets first whispered in its 2004 debut, Fabula (Rune Grammofon), with a new quiet masterpiece, Avellaneda.

Possibly a titular reference to the small port city in Argentina or the aristocratic family for which the town is named, Skyphone’s Avellaneda seems to recall nothing less than the cryptic landscapes and genealogies of Jorge-Luis Borges. In name alone, tracks like “Schweizerhalle," “Quetzal Cubicle,” and “Yetispor” present odd, polyglot taxonomies of old Europe and the New World. While the grab bag of gizmos in Avellaneda – glockenspiels, toy pianos, analog synths – and field sounds are all found in the band’s debut, the manner in which they are layered together vertically in the former rather than stitched laterally in the latter liberates the space of each track, allowing the sounds to tarry and erect their own internal rhythms.

This is a great leap forward in Holst and co.’s working method. As a Scandinavian relative to artists like Alog, Phonophani, and Kim Hiorthøy, Skyphone’s achievements in lush, ambient soundtracking are not without referents, but in demurring to the post-dance emulsions of glitchy beats or po-mo production, Avellaneda puts the group in a sonic universe somewhere between Debussy and Eno. In fact, the conjurations of moody bliss and non-Western rhythms make the album a sequel of sorts to Eno’s 1975 classic Another Green World (EG). Deserving of all of the hype, Skyphone confirms why Scandinavia is still at the forefront of avant-garde electro-acoustic music.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Imagine our grandfatherly gay delight at the megaspectacle promised by the approaching SF Symphony's holiday show: a big screen showing of The Wizard of Oz accompanied by a live symphony orchestra! Imagine!

Let's hope the piccolos don't drown out those flying monkeys ...

This event is looking to be super-popular, so get your tix now! Oh! And come dressed as your favorite character -- there'll be a contest in the lobby!

The Wizard of Oz with the San Francisco Symphony

Thursday, December 20 at 7:00 p.m.
Friday, December 21 at 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 22 at 2:00 p.m.
Children welcome and encouraged!
(Pint-sized ruby slippers not supplied)
www.sfsymphony.org

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Posted by Marke B. at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ah, yes – it’s that time of year again, and why not? There was a whole lotta sonics to love this past year in music, and below is my enhanced top 10 guiltless pleasures of 2007 list. I hope you disagree with and enjoy!

1. Jill Scott, “Hate On Me”

2. Cool Kids, “Black Mags”

3. Honey Soundsystem DJs

Continue reading "Marke B's Top 10 2007" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 05:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Erik Morse

German composer, serialist, sonic renegade, and electronic investigator Karlheinz Stockhausen died Wednesday, Dec. 5, at age 79 in Kuerten-Kettenberg, Germany. Largely responsible for introducing - or spoiling - the experimental harmonics of early 20th-century composers Messiaen and Webern to the futurist world of sine-wave electronics, tape-music, and micro-rhythms, he was lauded by everyone from Pierre Boulez to Paul McCartney, who famously included him on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s. Along with the works of LaMonte Young, Stockhausen’s varied and immense oeuvre proved to be the most influential and compelling of the latter half of the 20th century. According to a writer at London Observer, Stockhausen represented the spirit of rock ‘n' roll long before it acknowledged its forefather. Without Stockhausen, there would be no Beatles, no Velvet Underground, no Brian Eno, no Aphex Twin.

In proper cybernetic tribute, collected here are a number of interviews and excerpts from his work.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

An incredible argument against America’s tragic downsizing of school music programs? Why sure! What do you get when you create a national system of youth musical education that reaches 250,000 kids, spawns 120 orchestras, and offers even the poorest kids in the country an opportunity to express themselves and plug into global culture? Well, El Sistema, as the huge and tuneful operation in Venezuela is known, is one. Complete and utter musical bliss in the form of the globe-trotting Simon Bolivar National Youth Orchestra, under the direction of world hotshot 26-year-old conductor Gustavo Dudamel, is another. Check it:

(and before all you neo-cons jump all over the whole national program thing with your musty Soviet-socialist rhetoric, that’s the delightfully heretical Shostakovich they’re playing to cleverly diffuse you, dudes). The Youth Orchestra, which will be playing ol’ Shosty’s 10th Symphony, Bernstein’s West Side Story and some fiesty Latin American selections at Davies Symphony Hall this Sunday Nov 4, get pretty festive too:

Of course, there’s a temptation to romanticize these talented kids as geniuses of the barrios – but in many cases that’s indeed what they are. Come out this Sunday and see where a little inspiration and support can lead ….

Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra
Sunday, Nov 4, 7pm, $25-$81
Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Avenue, SF
(415) 864-6000
www.sfsymphony.org

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Posted by Marke B. at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Johnny Ace: a blues icon turns into one of rock's first casualties.

By Erik Morse

With Halloween soon approaching, all the party mixtapes and Goth soundtracks will inevitably be programmed with the scary and spectral. It only seems appropriate, then, to take a look at a history of some of these ghostly recordings, albeit of a slightly different kind.

Twentieth century music must have been possessed from the moment it became electrified, a seemingly endless séance of dead voices stripped of a bodily source and projected into the ether, replayed endlessly through phonographs, radios, tape-players, and iPods. And like other technologized art forms, popular music created a simultaneous narrative stream of folk tales and urban legends that emanated from fan to fan and fed back into the collective experience of "hearing" like the vibrations of an E string squealing against a Vox amplifier. More than a 100 years since Edison recorded the sounds of a nursery rhyme (extra credit if you know which one) in his Menlo Park laboratory, the most famous moments in popular "sound" have played loudly alongside a haunted loop of forgotten breakthroughs and discarded reels remanded to the archives of the preening critic and obsessive fanatic. These ghostly recordings and events may have been buried for ages so there’s no better time than Halloween to go digging them up again.

Never mind Brian Wilson’s infamous Smile, Bob Dylan’s electric turn at Newport ‘65 or Prince’s Black Album, these 12 notorious sonic “events” constitute a spectral and alternative history in recorded music’s century long canon. The more cryptic, the more incredible, and the more emphatic the anecdote, the scarier the sounds. Try playing some of these at your next Halloween party and see just how spooked your guests will get.

Continue reading "Spooked sounds: 12 lost albums and forgotten performances" »

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You may not love to listen to Beethoven like Annie Lennox's fabulously unravelling housewife ....

But would you listen to him if the conductor looked like this?

Does sex sell classical? Sure!

I know I would. And I will, as young Swiss conductor Philippe Jourdan leads the San Francisco Symphony (and renowned French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard) in Beethoven's lovely, sweeping, and somewhat hot-blooded Piano Concerto #3 -- as well as Ludwig van's Egmont Overture and Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony, October 26-27 at Davies Symphony Hall (and Thursday the 25th in Cupertino). Come for the cutie, stay for the music -- that's what I always slur ....

This Friday and Saturday evening. Click here for more dishy info.

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Posted by Marke B. at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From upon high: Tallis Scholars.

As summer melts into fall, symphonies, singers, and fine classical music purveyors shift into high gear. Contributor Ching Chang delved into a few Philip Glass performances, and offered an array of classical and opera picks in his fall arts preview - here are a few more selections.

More Philip Glass Works

Music for Two Pianos

This benefit concert for the Other Minds festival highlights Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa in a recital of works for two pianos by Philip Glass and JS Bach, as well as new works by Balduin Sulzer, Chen Yi, and San Francisco composer Adam Fong.

Oct. 11, 8 p.m. (panel discussion 7 p.m.), $20-$50. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness, SF. (415) 934-8134, www.otherminds.org

Synesthesia: Bridging the Senses

San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s BluePrint presents a performance of Philip Glass’s Facades, with projections by local video artist Elliot Anderson.

Oct. 13, 8 p.m. (discussion 7:15 pm.), $15-$20. Concert Hall, SF Conservatory of Music,
50 Oak, SF. (415) 503-6275, www.sfcm.edu

More Classical Music to Look Out For

Strauss's Alpine Symphony

Young Swiss conductor Phillippe Jordan is quickly emerging in Europe as an exciting interpreter of Richard Strauss. For his SF Symphony debut, he leads the Alpine Symphony, a massive tone poem scored for an orchestra of 120 musicians, which the composer uses to capture the epic feel of a journey through the Alps.

Oct. 25, 8 p.m., at Flint Center for the Performing Arts, 21250 Stevens Creek, Cupertino. Oct. 26-27, 8 p.m., at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF. $25-$125. (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org

Tallis Scholars

The finest a cappella ensemble in the world, the Tallis Scholars pay a visit to the Bay Area in their latest US tour, performing renaissance motets by Palestrina, Mouton, and Josquin, and other 15th and 16th century works centered on the Virgin Mary.

Nov. 30, 8 p.m., at First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing, Berk. Dec. 1, 8 p.m., at Grace Cathedral, 1100 California, SF. $48. (510) 642-9988, www.calperfomances.net

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know there are oodles of deeply closeted classical freeeaaaks out there, who are far too shy to venture toward the mink stole and helmet hair cabal at Davies Hall. Good news is that the San Francisco Symphony's Friday 6.5 Series now offers an earlier program at 6:30 p.m. than the usual 8 p.m. performance and features an intro by the conductor for the evening, accompanied by music generated by the fine members of the pit.


SFS music director Michael Tilson Thomas leads the pack.

I think we can all agree that it'll be nice to eat earlier than later for a change. San Francisco Symphony’s Friday 6.5 Series continues on Friday nights at 6:30 p.m. at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF, with Lawrence Foster conductor, and Radu Lupu, piano, on Jan. 26. Coming up: Feb. 9: MTT and Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano; March 16: James Gaffigan, conductor, and Yundi Li, piano; May 4: Hans Graf, conductor, and Alexander Barantschik, violin.

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Posted by Kimberly Chun at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The noses were small, the dresses were expensive, the Mayor was in attendance, and the music was sublime. Yep, I crashed the annual SF Symphony Opening Gala, chockful o' Zellerbachs, Wilseys, DuPonts and whomever else rich-like, and lived to blog all about it (despite being almost kicked out for yodeling during the singing of the National Anthem, ahem.)

"Pose for the Guardian? I've been in National Geographic, and I thought that was weird ..." (actual quote)

Continue reading "Gala Symphonix" »

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Posted by Marke B. at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)