Wednesday, April 19
San Francisco Recorder Society
Monthly playing session with conductor David Hogan Smith. New members and guests welcome.
7:30 PM–9:30 PM
Christ Church Lutheran
1090 Quintara St. (at 20th Ave.), San Francisco.
Non-members $10 fee applied to membership.
For more information contact Florence Kress: 415-731-9709, [email protected]
arssanfrancisco.org/
Friday, April 21
Barefoot Concerts presents The Paris Quartet
“Only the Best” Lisa Weiss, violin; Janet See, flute; Katherine Heater, harpsichord and Peter Hallifax, viol, perform music by Rameau and Telemann. Telemann wrote the famous Paris Quartets, in 1737, to be exact, for this particular combination of instruments (violin, flute, viol, and continuo), and they were indeed played in Paris by the leading instrumentalists of the time (Guignol, Blavet, Forqueray, and Telemann himself) at a famous concert series. They remained popular in Paris (as well as back in Germany) for a long time. Two of these lively and lovely quartets frame this program. These colorful pieces contrast perfectly with Rameau’s chamber masterworks, his sublime Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts. In these pieces Rameau gives the harpsichord the starring role and makes the viol, and flute or violin, accompany the music. They are, unusually, operatic music for a chamber ensemble, and endlessly entertaining. The pairing also gives us a look at what French music actually was, and what a German composer made of it. Rameau was, of course, the quintessential actual French composer; meanwhile Telemann was a raving francophile living in Hamburg, but writing on this occasion specifically for French players, in what was his idea of the French taste. Our players need no introduction: all four have been regulars of the Bay Area baroque scene for decades. Now they have come together to bring you the best of these great composers.
6 PM
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church Parish Hall,
2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
All Tickets $15 (free for those 18 and under).
Tickets at the door or reserve in advance online
California Bach Society, Paul Flight, Director
“A Charpentier Showcase” Although he labored within the shadow of the powerful and influential Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier had a long and successful career as a composer, working first for the devout widow-patroness Madame de Guise and, later as maître de musique at the Chapelle Royale. To give audiences a full taste of Charpentier’s music, we are performing the fascinating Litanie de la vierge, composed for use in the personal chapel of Madame de Guise, and Missa Assumpta est Maria, a remarkable late work of sublime beauty. Read more . . .
8 PM
St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
1111 O’Farrell St., San Francisco
Doors open 30 minutes prior to each performance.
Tickets: $40 (discounts for advance purchase, seniors, students, under 30; SFEMS members receive a $5 discount on the advance purchase price when using promotion code “SFEMS” —until 5 PM, Thursday, April 20. )
650-485-1097, http://www.calbach.org, [email protected]
Saturday, April 22
California Bach Society, Paul Flight, Director
“A Charpentier Showcase” Although he labored within the shadow of the powerful and influential Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier had a long and successful career as a composer, working first for the devout widow-patroness Madame de Guise and, later as maître de musique at the Chapelle Royale. To give audiences a full taste of Charpentier’s music, we are performing the fascinating Litanie de la vierge, composed for use in the personal chapel of Madame de Guise, and Missa Assumpta est Maria, a remarkable late work of sublime beauty. Read more . . .
8 PM
All Saints Episcopal Church
555 Waverley St., Palo Alto
Doors open 30 minutes prior to each performance.
Tickets: $40 (discounts for advance purchase, seniors, students, under 30; SFEMS members receive a $5 discount on the advance purchase price when using promotion code “SFEMS” —until 5 PM, Thursday, April 20. )
650-485-1097, http://www.calbach.org, [email protected]
Coro Ciconia, Asher Davison, director
“She Persisted” Devotion as guidance and inspiration for Du Fay, other medievals, and us all. As the masculine seeks to impose its will, the feminine remains inspiring and generative. Is the mercy we plead for, the fulfillment we seek, already present within ourselves? The backbone across our intensely joyous evening is the latest extant work of Du Fay, his Missa Ave Regina caelorum, parody of the magnificent motet in which he presumes to plead for his own immortal soul. The Mass’s familiar abject piety to the masculine Trinity is rendered personal and genuine by its masterful integration with Marian admiration. Du Fay’s motet begins and ends the program, and the later submission from Van Weerbeke, surely an homage, beckons the Flemish paragon’s style toward the Italian Renaissance. Ockeghem’s floridly intricate setting of the Alma redemptoris mater and Josquin’s meditatively powerful Salve Regina make further emphatic the reverence of the inviolate virgin. Love and death are inevitably central to the life that all this tackles. Two charming chansons of innocent yearning juxtapose the sacred and secular, as do two sumptuous yet concise settings from the Song of Solomon, Brumel’s impeccably lovely Sicut lilium and Dunstable’s sensual yet ethereal Quam pulchra es. The political sphere rears its all-too-relevant head in splendid manner. Machaut in his final motet Inviolata genitrix both bemoans the oppression of Reims during the Hundred Years’ War and beseeches worldly intercession from Mary; Ciconia extols Venecie, mundi splendor as the model city worthy of comparison even to the virgin, in his parallel text exhorting the city’s local royal to emulate the city and its accomplishments thus far. Singers: Michael Deacon, Peter Fisher, Cheryl Koehler, Jean McAneny, Ralph Prince, Scott Robinson
8 PM
Berkeley Methodist United Church Note new venue!
1710 Carleton Street, Berkeley
Suggested donations at the door: $20 general, $15 senior, $10 student
Live at Mission Blue presents Clerestory
“Gemini: Music for Double Choirs” Clerestory performs music of Victoria, Vivanco, Guerrero, Vaughn Williams, Palestrina, Britten, Howells, and Crabtree. For centuries the vast spaces of great cathedrals have inspired composers to write stereophonic music for two choirs that have enhanced their listeners’ transcendent experience. Polychoral motets for the amorous texts of the Song of Songs were written by Victoria, Vivanco, and Guerrero for the cathedrals of Renaissance Spain, while Palestrina’s profound Stabat Mater echoed in the newly completed dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Vaughn Williams brought the English choral tradition of the sixteenth century into the twentieth with his polychoral Mass in G Minor, first sung in the liturgy of London’s neo-Byzantine Westminster Cathedral. The potential of eight separate vocal parts have attracted modern composers as well, as you will hear in works Benjamin Britten, Steven Sametz, James MacMillan, Herbert Howells and Paul Crabtree. Clerestory’s eight voices, enhanced by the resonance of the “Brisbane cathedral” at Mission Blue Center, will combine in every permutation to illuminate this music that is both intricate and otherworldly.
8 PM
Mission Blue Cultural Center
475 Mission Blue Dr., Brisbane
$20
www.LiveAtMissionBlue.com
Napa Youth Chamber Ensemble and Napa Youth Symphony Bridge Ensemble
The Jarvis Conservatory celebrates the talent of young musicians by featuring the Napa Valley Youth Symphony Chamber Ensemble, comprised of some of the valley’s most accomplished string performers. Yasushi Ogura, strings coach and Chamber director, develops each program to reflect the talent of these musicians as well as highlight the Jarvis Conservatory’s fine acoustics. The April 22nd program features Bach, Brandenberg Concerto #5 with Violet Grgich, harpsichord; Bethanne Walker, flute; and Yasushi Orgua, violin. Also, Beethoven, String Quartet #4; Mozart, Viennese Serenades; and Gershwin, “Clap Your Hands.”
7 PM
Jarvis Conservatory
1711 Main St., Napa
Tickets online $15
707-2255-5445
Trinity Chamber Concerts presents Esfera Armoniosa
“Que Dulce Violencia” The Colombian early music ensemble Esfera Armoniosa (Claudia Liliana Gantivar, director and recorder; Sergio Llano, recorder; Andrés Silva, tenor; Julián Navarro, baroque guitar; Alfonso Correa, viola da gamba; and Sebastián Vega Q., lute) makes its North American debut in a program of baroque music from colonial Latin America as well as music of European composers influenced by music of the New World. Featured composers include Fray Manuel Blasco, Rafael Antonio Castellanos, Sebastián Durón, Francisco Guerau, Santiago de Murcia, Salvador Romero, Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde, Juan Lima Serqueira, and Alonso Torices. Read more . . .
8 PM
Trinity Chapel
2320 Dana, Berkeley
$20 general; $15 senior/students
[email protected] or 510-778-1719
Sunday, April 23
California Bach Society, Paul Flight, Director
“A Charpentier Showcase” Although he labored within the shadow of the powerful and influential Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marc-Antoine Charpentier had a long and successful career as a composer, working first for the devout widow-patroness Madame de Guise and, later as maître de musique at the Chapelle Royale. To give audiences a full taste of Charpentier’s music, we are performing the fascinating Litanie de la vierge, composed for use in the personal chapel of Madame de Guise, and Missa Assumpta est Maria, a remarkable late work of sublime beauty. Read more . . .
4 PM
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
2300 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Doors open 30 minutes prior to each performance.
Tickets: $40 (discounts for advance purchase, seniors, students, under 30; SFEMS members receive a $5 discount on the advance purchase price when using promotion code “SFEMS” —until 5 PM, Thursday, April 20. )
650-485-1097, http://www.calbach.org, [email protected]
MusicSources presents JungHae Kim
Beloved by audiences in the Bay Area and beyond, harpsichordist JungHae Kim will play music from France and Italy, contrasting the two main national styles of the baroque. Featured composers include D’Anglebert, Le Roux, and Scarlatti
5 PM
St. Mary Magdalen Church
2005 Berryman St., Berkeley
$30 non members, $25 MusicSources members and seniors, $10 students 18 yrs. or younger
510-528-1685 or
[email protected]
www.musicsources.org
Continue reading next week’s calendar . . .
