It’s the end of July, and things feel as if we’re in midseason.

In preparation for West Edge Opera’s two-week festival, SF Classical Voice previewed the company’s new production of The Turn of the Screw. The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra made an unusual foray into the midsummer calendar with a terrific production of Handel’s Tolomeo. Music@Menlo, now in its second week, pitched in with a chilling premiere of a new work by composer/pianist Stephen Hough.

But wait, there’s more! The tiny, Berkeley-based Midsummer Mozart Festival scored with a concert of Mozart’s works for Paris. SF Playhouse opened a winning production of the musical Hairspray, and Pocket Opera closed out its season with a strong performance of Giacomo Puccini’s La Rondine.

Meanwhile, in Santa Barbara at the Music Academy of the West, Tom Jacobs spoke with Conor Hanick, a pianist who turns the art of interpretation into an adventure.

Amid a welter of summer recording releases, SF Classical Voice writers reviewed countertenor John Holiday’s Over My Head, Claire Chase and the JACK Quartet’s premiere of Terry Riley’s The Holy Liftoff, and The Young People’s Chorus of New York City’s This Time Round, a compendium of new music commissioned during the COVID pandemic.

And a reminder: Nominations are being accepted for SF Classical Voice’s annual Audience Choice Awards. Don’t miss the chance to add your top group, artist, or performance to the list to ensure that your favorites make it through to the final round of voting.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Hairspray Gets a New Spritz of Life at SF Playhouse

By Andrew Gilbert

John Waters has described Hairspray as his “gift that keeps on giving.” While the director presided over the punk-inflected Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland, the Broadway smash musical delivered another uproarious triumph with San Francisco Playhouse’s winning production.

Based on Waters’s 1988 film of the same name, Hairspray is a locomotive that draws power from Marc Shaiman’s irresistible score. Running through Sept. 12, SF Playhouse’s production boasts a cast brimming with talent equal to the demands of a musical in constant motion.

Even with a last-minute substitution in a major role, the July 21 performance was polished and punchy. Barely contained by the intimate Union Square-adjacent theater, Director Bill English and Choreographer Phoenyx Rose effectively stage the major numbers with brio and commitment, starting in the first moments with the giddy opening “Good Morning, Baltimore.”

Set in Waters’s beloved hometown in 1962, Hairspray tells the story of the dauntless and zaftig teen Tracy Turnblad — played by Playhouse newcomer Ella Ruth Francis with all the requisite heart, moxie, pipes, and dance moves required — seeking to join the dance troupe on the local Corny Collins Show. Her personal campaign quickly grows into a civil rights struggle to integrate the broadcast, which has relegated Black dancers to a monthly “Negro day.”

Waters’s genius for marrying corn and camp to genuine affection for outsiders and underdogs comes through brightly in the musical version, which avidly promotes Black liberation, and allyship, through music and protest.

This cast is fully committed to celebrating this liberation. There really wasn’t a dull passage in the production, but some pieces like “Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now” soared above the rest.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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Jake Heggie’s The Judgment of Paris met everyone’s expectations at Festival Napa Valley last weekend. While critics sometimes demur, the composer’s vocal writing continues to be brilliant — the singers themselves are Heggie’s best advocates.

As Festival Napa Valley wrapped, SF Classical Voice reported on Lisa Delan’s “Classical Cabaret,” with nine artists participating. And the orchestral finale of the festival was conducted by JoAnn Falletta and featured a salute to American music, tied to the 250^th anniversary of the birth of the U.S.

At Music@Menlo, James Bash reviewed “Being Mendelssohn,” a concert that brought three of the composer’s underplayed but glorious works to the fore. Valley of the Moon Music Festival visited Vienna circa 1878, in a concert full of great music and surprises.

Further down the coast at the Carmel Bach Festival, Richard Ginell was impressed by a pair of conductor Andrew Megill’s choral concerts, one centered on settings of poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke and the other a strong presentation of J.S. Bach cantatas.

In Santa Barbara, Music Academy of the West’s composer-in-residence Missy Mazzoli curated a program of her chamber music and one excellent work by her 15-year-old mentee. And then the Academy Festival Orchestra played Gustav Holst’s The Planets with recent images of outer space projected on a screen. Meanwhile, Tom Jacobs interviewed MAW’s other famous composer in residence, Kevin Puts, who will see his chamber opera Elizabeth Cree staged this weekend.

Extending SF Classical Voice’s reach, Andrew Gilbert made contact with members of the grassroots musicians’ collective that will come together this weekend for the 23^rd Outsound New Music Summit at Finnish Hall in Berkeley. Finally, Tamzin Elliott reviewed the recording of Andrew Yee’s deeply affecting Trans Requiem.

Marshal your thoughts: Nominations for SFCV’s annual Audience Choice Awards will open in a week!

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

At Festival Napa Valley, The Judgment of Paris Has Notes of Wit and Brilliance

By Michael Zwiebach, senior editor

“Come with open ears!” says Grete Pedersen, extending an invitation to the annual Carmel Bach Festival.

Pedersen, artistic director and principal conductor of the Festival, which runs from July 11-25 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, created an intriguing program on the theme “the nature of sound” by placing historical masterpieces in conversation with contemporary works.

Pedersen picked the theme because she professes “a love for sound itself, not just for music.” She revels in the universe of textures and speeds that can be found in the sounds “all around us and in us.”

The word “nature,” of course, has a double meaning. Composers from antiquity to today have been inspired by the earth’s noises. The Festival’s featured composer this year, Angélica Negrón, brings a piece that includes field recordings from birds and waves in Puerto Rico.

The Carmel Bach Festival, now in its 89th Season, is one of the oldest music festivals in the United States. While Bach features heavily in each season’s repertoire, this year’s program is by no means restrained to the Baroque era.

Pedersen, in her fourth year as the program’s artistic director, says she is proud to carry forward the legacy of the two women who founded the Festival, Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous. “They were really in love with the history and at the same time they were also in love with the contemporary music,” Pedersen said.

Music doesn’t split neatly into “old” and “new” for Pedersen. She approaches even the best-known masterpieces as if she were conducting a premiere performance. On July 17 and 24, she will conduct Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, one of the best known pieces of classical orchestra music in existence. “If this was the first time the piece was played, how would it be?” she asks herself. “How does it resonate with us now, on the day of the concert?”

On opening night, the program starts with selections from Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons, from Spring and Summer. Then the orchestra will play Muohta — Language of Snow, a piece by Norwegian composer Nils Henrik Asheim that Pedersen commissioned. Then the program will conclude with Autumn, because Fall is the season of thanksgiving. Pedersen said the Festival wants to send the audience into a post-concert party in the mood to celebrate the Festival’s opening.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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The biggest event of the summer is approaching: Jake Heggie’s opera The Judgment of Paris premieres at Festival Napa Valley this Saturday. Emily Wilson spoke with the opera’s creators to find out what it’s really about. Also at Napa, the Festival’s opening night concert hit the mark with the vaunted Young People’s Chorus of New York City.

There was also a lot of high-level action last week. Merola Opera Program set its young singers to Peter Brook’s adaptation of Carmen. Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Grete Pedersen led the Carmel Bach Festival forces in a stirring performance of Haydn’s oratorio, The Seasons. And SFCV’s Caroline Chen profiled Pedersen, who opened up about her musical interests and Carmel’s program.

In L.A. the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, led by Music Director Thomas Wilkins, began its season with the premiere of an adaptation of songs from the musical Suffs, with its creator, Shaina Taub, taking part. There was also music from the Harlem Renaissance by William Grant Still and Duke Ellington. Further south, San Diego Opera presented its production of Gregory Spears’s hit opera Fellow Travelers.

If that’s not enough, the Del Sol Quartet honored Hawaiian history on Angel Island, and New Century Chamber Orchestra announced its next season along with the extension of Daniel Hope’s contract as music director. We interviewed Chelsea Wang, one of the great musicians from Music@Menlo, and Andrew Gilbert reviewed jazz pianist Charles Chen at Piedmont Piano.

And for your listening pleasure, we reviewed star pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s newest recording of music by Philip Glass.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Old and New Collide at Carmel Bach Festival with “The Nature of Sound”

By Caroline Chen

“Come with open ears!” says Grete Pedersen, extending an invitation to the annual Carmel Bach Festival.

Pedersen, artistic director and principal conductor of the Festival, which runs from July 11-25 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, created an intriguing program on the theme “the nature of sound” by placing historical masterpieces in conversation with contemporary works.

Pedersen picked the theme because she professes “a love for sound itself, not just for music.” She revels in the universe of textures and speeds that can be found in the sounds “all around us and in us.”

The word “nature,” of course, has a double meaning. Composers from antiquity to today have been inspired by the earth’s noises. The Festival’s featured composer this year, Angélica Negrón, brings a piece that includes field recordings from birds and waves in Puerto Rico.

The Carmel Bach Festival, now in its 89th Season, is one of the oldest music festivals in the United States. While Bach features heavily in each season’s repertoire, this year’s program is by no means restrained to the Baroque era.

Pedersen, in her fourth year as the program’s artistic director, says she is proud to carry forward the legacy of the two women who founded the Festival, Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous. “They were really in love with the history and at the same time they were also in love with the contemporary music,” Pedersen said.

Music doesn’t split neatly into “old” and “new” for Pedersen. She approaches even the best-known masterpieces as if she were conducting a premiere performance. On July 17 and 24, she will conduct Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, one of the best known pieces of classical orchestra music in existence. “If this was the first time the piece was played, how would it be?” she asks herself. “How does it resonate with us now, on the day of the concert?”

On opening night, the program starts with selections from Franz Joseph Haydn’s The Seasons, from Spring and Summer. Then the orchestra will play Muohta — Language of Snow, a piece by Norwegian composer Nils Henrik Asheim that Pedersen commissioned. Then the program will conclude with Autumn, because Fall is the season of thanksgiving. Pedersen said the Festival wants to send the audience into a post-concert party in the mood to celebrate the Festival’s opening.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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As if to compensate for the impending summer slowdown, the SF Symphony packed the July 4th holiday weekend with action. Chloé Van Soeterstède’s debut with the Symphony could have benefited from more rehearsal time, while a large crowd grooved to the sounds of A.R. Rahman’s movie scores. But the most exciting news came last week, when the Symphony announced the latest winner of its Emerging Black Composer’s Project.

It was also a newsworthy week on the jazz front. Jeff Kaliss interviewed one of the greatest living American musicians, Wynton Marsalis, ahead of his appearances at Festival Napa Valley and SFJAZZ. Herb Alpert made a long-awaited return to the Hollywood Bowl. Andy Gilbert caught up with Steven Bernstein and his unusual band, Sexmob, ahead of their dates at SFJAZZ. And on the rock-classical front, Jens Ibsen interviewed one of his idols, Japanese metal legend Yoshiki, whose upcoming concert at Walt Disney Hall has long been sold out.

In a busy news week, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced its new concertmaster, Latvian violinist Vineta Sareika. Chamber Music America announced awards to local groups in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Janos Gereben picked out his favorite BBC Proms concerts from the upcoming two-month-long festival. He also previewed the Golden Gate International Choral Festival, which kicks off on July 13 under the auspices of Robert Geary and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Chorus.

If you’re looking to enjoy music from the comfort of your home, Jason Victor Serinus highly recommends Houston Grand Opera’s fine recording of a relatively new classic, Daniel Catán’s “irresistibly lush” Florencia en el Amazonas.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Yoshiki is a Rebellious Rock Star Grounded in Classical Tradition

By Jens Ibsen

Yoshiki is a rock star defined by contradictions.

The multihyphenate is at home in both the classical music of his youth and the rock music that would come to define his career domestically and abroad. His unshakeable desire to actualize art in all its forms has resulted in a historic career as one of Japan’s most important musicians of all time.

He co-founded X Japan, a band which was foundational to the development of Japanese metal and visual kei — Japan’s homegrown subculture that has contributed to global musical phenomena, like K-pop. His flagship symphonic work, the prog-metal symphony Art of Life (1993), topped the nation’s music chart, Oricon, and cemented X Japan and Yoshiki as singular talents.

He has received numerous awards and accolades in Japan and abroad, including writing and performing an original piano concerto for the Japanese imperial family. But make no mistake: he’s not just big in Japan. He has produced for an impressively varied roster of musicians like Skrillex, Bono, and St. Vincent, and more recently even shared the stage with the very bands that inspired him to make rock music: KISS and Queen.

In addition to his musical activities, Yoshiki has made massive waves as a fashion designer — he was recognized by The New York Times as a pivotal figure in fashion among contemporaries like Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo. He also made his directorial debut in his documentary Yoshiki: Under the Sky in 2023, and has had a long career as a philanthropist, most recently fundraising for Ukraine and volunteering on behalf of the Los Angeles fire victims.

In anticipation of his two-night concert event in Los Angeles at Walt Disney Concert Hall on July 16-17, Yoshiki spoke with SF Classical Voice about his musical origins and career milestones. He also shared powerful insight into his feelings around rebellion and tradition — how these both inform the paths young artists must tread in the wake of a rapidly changing musical landscape.

You have had incredible successes across a wide array of disciplines, both within music as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer and also in other creative fields like fashion design. Tell me more about the origins of your interdisciplinary artistry.

Growing up, I played music from a young age. My parents were musicians, but my family profession was in making kimonos. I was the oldest son, so I was expected to one day take over the business. I used to go to the record store with my father a lot. When he passed away, I went to the record store [and] I saw a new album by the rock band KISS that looked at me with this kind of crazy makeup.

Lots of visual kei bands were inspired by them! There must have been something familiar in their trademark corpse paint, which was itself inspired by Kabuki.

Yes, you are right. So, I was listening a lot to bands like that. And one day, I asked my mother if I could go see them play a show in Tokyo — I grew up in Chiba Prefecture. So we went to the concert, I was about 11 or 12 years old, and my mother of course wore a kimono, very traditional. She didn’t know she would get covered in blood!

Later on, after making rock music for many years, I decided to return to fashion. I thought, the most natural thing was to start with kimono. I met with a kimono business coming from Kyoto running for 150 years. We started creating a crazy rock and roll edgy kimono on top of the traditional version.

With classical music, I’m kind of doing the same thing. I am just interested in art. No matter whether it is music or anything else, it is all engaging to me. More than anything, I am always inspired by whatever is edgy — I have a rebel streak. And I think that has informed what I do.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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Pride Month in San Francisco has ample tradition behind it, but there’s always room for more celebration. San Francisco Opera brought the second iteration of its Pride Concert to the city, at a time when support for LGBTQ+ folks is more necessary than ever.

Last weekend, the Bay Area mourned the loss of soprano Erie Mills, the artistic director and irrepressible spirit of Livermore Valley Opera. The robustness of the company is an enduring part of her legacy, which includes recordings, awards, and a long association with San Francisco Opera.

The San Francisco Symphony brought its subscription concert season to a close with a stunner: Stéphane Denève conducting Camille Saint-Saens’s Symphony No. 3 with Notre-Dame de Paris organist Olivier Latry playing Davies Hall’s impressive organ. But the summer season begins without a break: the Symphony is readying a concert featuring the music of A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) this week.

On the choral front, the singers of Palo Alto-based Ensemble Continuo, founded just three years ago, punched well above their weight in a concert that concluded with Frank Martin’s challenging Mass for Double Choir.

After the July 4^th celebrations conclude, the summer festival season will be in full swing. Andrew Gilbert reviewed the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s final weekend while Victoria Looseleaf looked forward to Festival Napa Valley with a profile of the violin duo Hina & Fiona, who will premiere a John Corigliano-penned work on the festival’s opening weekend.

Meanwhile, Janos Gereben previewed the new opera Madame Theremin, which will receive a workshop performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music on July 11. The New York City Ballet impressed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and the Colburn Conservatory of Music announced a partnership with recording label Delos.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

SF Opera’s Pride Concert Turns Urgent and Exuberant

By Steven Winn

The singing was splendid, the costumes deluxe, the lighting rainbow-hued. But even for an audience that came primed for a high time at San Francisco Opera’s second annual Pride Concert on Friday, June 26, surprises both musical and emotional were in store at the War Memorial Opera House.

There was, for starters, the bustling, bumptious ride of the late Michael Tilson Thomas’s orchestral Agnegram, complete with slide whistle, cowbell, and a quotation of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. Conductor Robert Mollicone led the SF Opera Orchestra in a spirited performance of the former San Francisco Symphony music director’s 1998 piece.

MTT, as SF Opera General Director Matthew Shilvock noted in eloquent remarks from the stage, was one of the first openly gay music directors of a major American orchestra. Shilvock also made the point, which can’t be made too often or strongly enough, that this or any celebration of LGBTQIA+ rights comes at a time “when so much is under attack.”

It felt fitting, then, that one of the night’s first operatic selections was the high-stakes farewell aria of the tormented heroine in Charles Gounod’s Sapho (1851).

Performing in a gown with expandable blue side-panels that became, in turn, a cocoon, upswept wings, and a collapsing death spiral, mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz delivered a verismo-like jolt as the ancient Greek woman now celebrated for her lesbian poetry.

While that aria reached one kind of peak, so in a completely different and improbable vein did soprano Melody Moore’s flat-out fantastic cover of Brandi Carlisle’s “It’s a Joke.” Starting at a slow, slightly peevish simmer, Moore kept turning up the heat in this anthem of hard-won defiance. She leaned into the chorus, which concludes, “I have been to the movies. I know how it ends. The joke’s on them.”

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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The San Francisco Symphony played on this week, and incredibly there are still delights to anticipate from them. While the orchestra’s rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth disappointed our reviewer, Chloé Van Soeterstède provided a window into her conducting style as she prepares for her Symphony debut, on July 1.

Meanwhile, Lisa Hirsch reported on Festival Opera’s sublimely funny production of Handel’s Alcina, conducted by the stalwart Derek Tam. And Jeff Kaliss caught Branford Marsalis’s brilliant set at the Healdsburg Jazz Festival.

In the news this week, Marin Symphony is looking forward to its next season, when it will be back in their Marin Civic Center home, after floating for a few years during the Center’s renovation. Andrew Gilbert previewed Luciana Souza’s concert at Stanford Jazz, where she will perform her “New Moon” project. And Janos Gereben tips us off to the handful of incredible rising stars who will appear in Steinway Society Bay Area’s next season.

In L.A. the chamber orchestra Sejong Soloists made a return to UCLA with a powerful concert anchored by a familiar Tchaikovsky masterpiece. And the Baroque ensemble Kontrapunktus finished its 2025-2026 season strongly.

On the recording front, SFCV writers noted and reviewed My Brother’s Keeper, an extraordinary album by six famous Black male singers, Turtle Island Quartet’s Island Prayers, which features a new work by founder/first violinist David Balakrishnan, Jonas Kaufmann’s album of operetta arias, and the National Symphony Orchestra’s brilliant traversal of Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Under Gaffigan, SF Symphony Loses the Plot of Beethoven’s Ninth

By Collin Ziegler

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a standard with drama, thrills and that melody of all melodies, “Ode to Joy.” Everyone knows it, which means even the best musicians must meet an audience’s high expectations.

On Thursday, June 18, in a program dedicated to the late Michael Tilson Thomas, who led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years, guest conductor James Gaffigan and the orchestra gave an account that showed why the piece continues to loom so large — and why it remains such a challenge.

Gaffigan’s conducting, as he proved just last year with the Symphony, is unfailingly energetic. His command of the orchestra is precise, so that the performance is always robust. Even the most complex passages are clear in his hands, and he’s a pro at balancing textures and synchronizing multiple lines. Nothing seemed to faze Gaffigan, even in the final movement, where fast-moving counterpoint and the addition of the chorus can challenge the surest conductors.

In drawing so much attention to the details of the score, however, Gaffigan sacrificed the heart of the symphony: its drama and storytelling.

Whatever you want to call it — joy, humanity, love — there is a hero in this symphony, a lyrical instinct that fights to come to the surface. It can be heard in the sunnier patches of the stormy opening movement, in the soft trios of the second and imbued in the vast song of the adagio. Then that instinct emerges triumphantly as the “Ode to Joy” melody, supplanting all previous themes in the fourth movement.

Gaffigan failed to make much of this arc.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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When Carlisle Floyd saw the premiere of his opera Susannah in 1955, he was bucking the trend of high-visibility American composition toward atonality. The opera went on to become one of the most performed American works. Several of Floyd’s subsequent works like Of Mice and Men (1972) have also claimed a place in the operatic canon, which is why the late composer is being celebrated this year, especially in a Lincoln Center tribute. Katelyn Simone tells the story for SFCV.

Famed vocalist (and now songwriter) Tierney Sutton has teamed with the great pianist Tamir Hendelman to produce a new album of songs about spring. It’s the first of four seasonal albums, as they shared with Andrew Gilbert.

In the news, David Hockney, the great artist who made indelible contributions to opera with his set and costume designs, died last week. Read Janos Gereben’s tribute. And the Aspen Festival announced the appointment of Meghan Umber as its CEO, who has headed the LA Philharmonic’s planning department for a decade.

In last week’s highlight concert, the San Francisco Symphony welcomed debuting conductor Tianyi Lu, with the spectacular violinist María Dueñas. At the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition, the music of Francis Johnson, a Black Pennsylvanian of the Early Republic era, was given a dazzling performance by Music of the Regiment with the New York Baroque Dance Company. Meanwhile, the legendary early music vocal group Sequentia was on hand for a concert of medieval German songs. And we previewed the festival production of Handel’s Alcina which will also play this weekend.

Our reviewers at the Ojai Music Festival in the gorgeous Ojai Valley were stunned by the festival’s brilliant music-making and smart programming. The festival focused on works by this year’s music director Esa-Pekka Salonen and his contemporaries, most notably composer John Adams, whose Iron Jig was premiered by the Attacca Quartet during the festival.

Finally, don’t miss another brace of CD reviews: Jason Victor Serinus on Sondra Radvanovsky’s Puccini Heroines and Richard Ginell on a Mahler Fifth Symphony from the Grand Teton Music Festival, conducted by Donald Runnicles.sfcv.org

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Celebrating Carlisle Floyd, Father of American Opera, at 100

After a performance of Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men in Phoenix, Arizona, a woman approached the composer. “Mr. Floyd,” she said, “this is really real.”

Floyd said he was “amused, and also enormously complimented.” It’s just what he intended for the opera.

Floyd, who passed away in 2021 at age 95, was a preeminent composer-librettist. Though many consider him to be the “Father of American Opera,” his excellence is recognized across opera at-large.

In 2004, he received the National Medal of Arts for “giving American opera its national voice.” Floyd earned the honor by writing earnest, insistently lyrical music to illuminate stories and shadows from his homeland in the Deep South.

This year marks the centennial of Floyd’s birth. The anniversary will be celebrated internationally with over 50 performances, including 30 opera productions, and community and educational initiatives. On June 20, the celebration arrives in New York with a concert at Carnegie Hall.

Ask anyone who knew Floyd about him, and the same words come up: kind, calm, and funny.

“He was a live wire,” said composer Jake Heggie, a close friend and mentee of Floyd’s. According to Heggie, Floyd was the kind of person with whom you could exchange knowing glances across a room. “He had a real fire and spirit of curiosity inside.”

Floyd grew up in rural South Carolina. The son of a traveling Methodist preacher, he moved between numerous small towns, absorbing the Depression-era Southern social fabric: square dances, front porch gossip, prayer services, and pervasive intolerance.

He told The New York Times, “The thing that horrified me already as a child about revival meetings was mass coercion, people being forced to conform to something against their will without even knowing what they were being asked to confess or receive.” Floyd’s skepticism of religion and the persecution of outsiders would imprint all his art.

From a young age, Floyd was creative in all directions. He painted and drew, and wrote fiction that would later become libretti. When it came time for college, these paths all seemed viable. Music narrowly won by way of a scholarship to study piano.

While teaching piano at Florida State University, Floyd found the form that melded his gifts: opera. Floyd began composing, and infused his music with the sounds of his upbringing: fiddlers and folk tunes, hymns and hoedowns, and long vocal lines that served his passion for storytelling.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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The big story this week was the opening of SF Opera’s superb revival of Elektra, with a brilliant cast conducted by Music Director Eun Sun Kim. Across Grove Street at Davies Symphony Hall, Elim Chan’s first appearance as SF Symphony’s music director-designate was cause for celebration — she received a tidal wave of welcoming applause.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Gustavo Dudamel wrapped up his tenure as music director of the LA Philharmonic in brilliant style, though we know his association with the orchestra has just entered a new phase. Richard Ginell took a look at three recent recordings of LA Phil concerts led by Dudamel.

At Berkeley Repertory Theater, The Lunchbox, a new musical about Bombay’s lunch delivery network, is a smash hit. On a smaller scale, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and guest soloist Omari Tau played a provocative double bill of Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale and a new opera by David Dominique.

It was a busy news week. We learned that a longtime Santa Cruz arts patron Gabrielle Stocker left generous bequests to several of the area’s music organizations, including the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. And the Pentatone recording label will publish works by SF Conservatory of Music composers as part of its 25^th anniversary celebrations.

This weekend marks the beginning of the summer season. The Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra will take on a serious new work, Terezín Requiem. Lily O’Brien reported on the Healdsburg Jazz Festival under bandleader Marcus Shelby’s leadership. SFCV writers also reviewed recordings by guitarist Sean Shibe and the Cleveland Orchestra, which captured music by composer/flutist Allison Loggins-Hull.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Elim Chan Receives a Hero’s Welcome at First SF Symphony Concert Since Historic Appointment

By Steven Winn

Elim Chan’s first concert with the San Francisco Symphony since her breathtaking appointment as its next music director felt like a coronation.

It happened without a whisper of pomp and circumstance on Friday, June 5. From the standing ovation and torrent of applause that greeted Chan when she entered the stage, to the tidal wave she and the orchestra unleashed in Debussy’s “La Mer,” the atmosphere in Davies Symphony Hall was freshly energized, ebullient, and engaged.

When her six-year term begins in the 2027-2028 season, Chan will be the first woman at the helm in the orchestra’s 115-year history.

The 39-year-old Hong Kong native was in a groove from the beginning. Before a note was played, she flashed a hand hard around the hall and declared, “I’m definitely feeling a lot of love.”

She one-upped herself after intermission. With her arms flung wide, she told the packed-house, “I just hope I can give you a big hug in my arms.”

The audience felt her embrace in ways both boisterous and distinctly personal.

Joanna Garaventa, a violinist with the Diablo Symphony Orchestra, hadn’t attended an SFS concert in years. Chan’s appearance brought her back. Garaventa said that being led by a woman conductor, as she is with Matilda Hofman at Diablo, creates “a different connection with the orchestra. It’s more intimate.”

Chris Eden, who was attending his first-ever SF Symphony concert, said at intermission he was “overwhelmed with emotions. At first I was watching the conductor. Then I closed my eyes and let the music immerse me.”

Pianist Anne Rainwater remarked on Chan’s “expressiveness” on the podium. “Her moves are so fluid and beautiful.”

Chan’s conducting presence reads big without being excessively demonstrative or showy. Most everything she does looks and feels purposeful and efficient, from her clear beats, to hand-pinched cutoffs and supple cues. When the moment demands it — a big surge, brass payoff or concussive climax — she delivers it with full-body force.

Dressed in a smartly embroidered fitted jacket and black dress, Chan conveyed both elegance and dynamism, in her bouncy knee bends and way of leaning over the musicians as if to summon and shape every note and measure.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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As California voters made consequential decisions in the primary elections this week, their energy and urgency were reflected in the live arts.

San Francisco Opera opened its summer season with a sunny revival of The Barber of Seville while Los Angeles Opera presented its durable Barrie Kosky production of The Magic Flute.

The indispensable Opera Parallèle performed Douglas Cuomo’s Doubt in a spare, dramatic new chamber version. And the company announced plans for its next season, including recent works by composers Joby Talbot and Kamala Sankaram. The Redwood Symphony gathered an excellent cast for Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. And Victoria Looseleaf interviewed Elena Pankratova, the star of the company’s Elektra, which opens this weekend.

The San Francisco Symphony under guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya played a slew of Spanish and Latin-themed works and premiered composer Jimmy López’s trombone concerto, Shift, with principal trombone Timothy Higgins as soloist.

Down in L.A., Gustavo Dudamel continued his triumphant final run as LA Philharmonic’s music director by pairing Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben with a new cello concerto, Mundillo, by Angelica Negrón.

Anne Hege’s innovative The Glance: A Laptopera made a splash at ODC. And Janos Gereben highlighted upcoming World Cup-themed concerts by Symphony San José and the LA Phil.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Elena Pankratova Arrives at SF Opera Primed to Inhabit Elektra, One of Opera’s Most Punishing Roles

Russian soprano Elena Pankratova has sung Elektra in some of Europe’s leading opera houses, from Vienna and Amsterdam to Dresden, Lyon and Naples.

Now, she brings the demanding title role to San Francisco Opera for the first time.

When Pankratova makes her company debut in Elektra on Sunday, June 7, she will embody the vengeful heroine in her 17th production of Richard Strauss’ 1909 one-act opera, a relentless masterpiece of love, betrayal and murder.

“All of (my Elektra’s) were very different. Some of them were intelligent and some of them were stupid,” Pankratova told SF Classical Voice with a boisterous laugh. “But it’s an absolutely special experience.”

Running through June 27 at the War Memorial Opera House, Pankratova will sing under Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s baton in Keith Warner’s updated staging. In Warner’s unyielding 100-minute version of the bloody tale of the house of Agamemnon, Elektra becomes trapped overnight in a museum where key props, including the axe used to murder her father, are housed in display cases.

Elektra is the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Klytämnestra. In the original story, the Queen and Elektra’s stepfather murder the King. Consumed by a vow of vengeance, Elektra confronts them alone after her sister Chrysothemis flees. But Warner’s version tells a different story.

“This is a special situation. It’s well-thought through and, in a sense, it’s all about (Elektra),” Pankratova said. She explained how, in Warner’s telling, no one is guilty since Elektra’s father kills himself. “It’s all made up in her head. I never expected to perform something like this, and I really appreciate (it).”

Kühnhold said returning to the company and working with Pankratova this spring has been a “special and intense experience.”

“Through the staging sessions, we discovered many new facets of the (titular) character,” Kühnhold said. “The interplay between the very subtle musical interpretation, where every note and phrase permeates the stage action, is a crucial element of this production, and it’s wonderful to see the meticulousness and passion with which Elena brings herself to this role.”

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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Conductors continued to make news this week. Barely a week after Elim Chan’s appointment to lead the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that Daniel Harding would be its next music director. Meanwhile, Gustavo Dudamel began the final stretch of his tenure with an extravagant, Frank Gehry-designed Die Walküre, performed over three nights.

SFCV enjoyed in-depth conversations with SF Symphony-affiliates. Chan sat down with our writer, Lisa Hirsch, for an interview about her plans for the Symphony. We also spoke with one of the orchestra’s new hires, principal bassoonist Joshua Elmore.

On the opera front, we previewed the upcoming production of Douglas Cuomo and John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt at Opera Parallèle. Music of Remembrance brought its latest new work, Tom Cipullo and Howard Reich’s The Dialogue of Memories to San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre. And Victoria Looseleaf talked to Jodie Landau about his rock opera Performance of Self, which Beth Morrison Projects presents at REDCAT this weekend.

Janos Gereben reported on the upcoming finals of the Klein String Competition. Andrew Gilbert talked to Brazilian pianist Jovino Santos-Neto about his work preserving the legacy of Hermeto Pascoal, a giant of Brazilian jazz. And a legend of contemporary music, soprano Joan La Barbara, took the stage with harpist Shelley Burgon for an enthralling concert in Los Angeles.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Dudamel Opens his Final Disney Hall Run with a Wagnerian Epic

Before he skips out the door to the New York Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel gave Los Angeles one last blockbuster project last week.

To start his final run through Walt Disney Concert Hall as the LA Phil’s music and artistic director, Dudamel tackled Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre. He presented two cycles with one act per performance, totaling six days in all.

This is a really good idea for the performers — especially the singers who can give their vocal cords a good long overnight rest between acts. It is also a good idea for the thoughtful among us in the audience, giving us space to contemplate the world of ideas and depictions of human nature that Wagner overwhelms his listeners with.

It may not be so good, though, for music lovers on tight budgets who will have to buy three tickets in order to see a single opera.

The bittersweet feeling in Disney Hall for Act I on Tuesday night (May 19) was not just about Dudamel’s impending departure. It was also for the late Frank Gehry, who died last December at 96 just after completing the set designs for this nearly fully staged production, which is now dedicated to him.

But on the other hand, I wouldn’t dwell too much on loss. Dudamel is not leaving L.A. high and dry; he’ll return for four weeks per season at Disney Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, bearing, as of Tuesday, new titles — artistic and cultural laureate of the LA Phil, and founding director and conductor laureate of YOLA. And Gehry’s presence remains with us via his dazzling hall, now a living memorial.

In his designs for Das Rheingold at Disney Hall in 2024, Gehry tried to transcend the limitations of a concert hall not designed as an opera house. For Act I of Walküre, he went even further.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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The SF Symphony made news twice this week, both good and bad. 98-year-old conductor Herbert Blomstedt suffered a partial collapse in the third movement of a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony with the orchestra, almost falling off the bench he was seated on. Blomstedt’s extraordinary longevity has been a source of wonder for a decade now, during which he’s given a number of outstanding performances at SFS.

Much more happily, the orchestra announced Elim Chan as its new music director. SFCV handicappers had Chan at the top of our odds sheet for a while, or maybe we were just hoping. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the orchestra announced that 30-year-old superstar Anna Handler, a former Dudamel Fellow, will become its first conductor-in-residence.

Meanwhile, the San Diego Symphony gave a superb performance of Jimmy López’s Perú negro, as the composer’s two-year stint as the orchestra’s composer-in-residence came to a close. And former Merola Opera Program bass-baritone Joshua Hopkins talked to Victoria Looseleaf about his upcoming run as Figaro in San Francisco Opera’s The Barber of Seville.

In other stories this week:

• Composer Christopher Cerrone had a big week in L.A., hosting excerpts of his opera, In a Grove, with The Industry and introducing the world premiere of his double concerto Selah with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

• New SFCV writer Jens Ibsen reported on the relatively new Aeternum Choir.

• Kedrick Armstrong conducted the Oakland Symphony in a brilliant finale, featuring R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses and Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony.

• Pacific Opera Project gave Héctor Armienta’s Zorro — it was a brash and colorful performance.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Herbert Blomstedt Struggles Through SF Symphony Concert

By Lisa Hirsch

Herbert Blomstedt’s return to the San Francisco Symphony, the orchestra he led from 1985 to 1995, didn’t go as planned.

Blomstedt, the Symphony’s conductor laureate, reportedly arrived in San Francisco last week in a state of fatigue after conducting Anton Bruckner with the Berlin Philharmonic in late April and Gustav Mahler with the Detroit Symphony earlier in May.

“Out of an abundance of caution,” Symphony spokesperson Taryn Lott told SF Classical Voice, “he was admitted to the hospital.”

Blomstedt, who turns 99 in July, recovered sufficiently to run the last rehearsal for Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, Lott added, but David Robertson, former music director of the St. Louis Symphony and a regular guest with the Symphony, led the earlier rehearsals. Robertson was prepared to step in for the performances if Blomstedt’s health didn’t permit him to conduct.

As Blomstedt came onstage at Davies Symphony Hall on Friday, May 15, the audience greeted the beloved conductor with a prolonged standing ovation. Fans had been invited to dress up in honor of his presence and in keeping with this, the orchestra, usually clad in long black, was also all dressed up, the men sporting tails and white tie, many of the women in sparkly, floor-length gowns.

But Blomstedt, looking quite frail, made his entrance in a wheelchair, accompanied by several attendants who carefully helped him onto the podium and onto a piano bench stationed there.

The performance that followed was a distinctly mixed bag. Blomstedt conducted without a baton and his beat seemed quite small, though some of his cues were high above the stand holding his score. As the symphony progressed, he seemed less and less physically in control of himself.

The orchestra was intently focused on the conductor, but also on each other, visibly so. Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik — who played his solo passages with poised intensity — moved with the music more than usual, perhaps helping to reinforce Blomstedt’s beat.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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As the spring concert season winds to a close, SFCV’s editors have compiled our Summer Festival Guide. Bookmark it for your calendars. It used to be that summer was an off-season, but that’s no longer true. If you’re taking a July vacation, good for you (really!) but you’ll miss a ton of live music and dance events here in California.

The spotlight was on conductors this week. Our writers covered Dima Slobodeniouk’s return to the SF Symphony after a six-year absence. (Last week, we interviewed him.) In L.A., Lorenzo Viotti made a belated and brilliant debut with the LA Phil and James Conlon conducted a revival of his beloved production of Benjamin Britten’s Noah’s Flood. And Magen Solomon led the San Francisco Bach Choir in a stirring performance of J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

In non-conductor news:

• Stanford Live announced its 2026-2027 season

• Lara Downes put on her This Land: Reflections on America concert with an all-star cast at Cal Performances

• Melissa Tanus is bringing together another edition of the SF Tap Festival

• Gabriella Smith wowed a Green Umbrella audience at Walt Disney Concert Hall

• Jean-Yves Thibaudet played Claude Debussy’s 24 Preludes at Stanford Live

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Dima Slobodeniouk Makes a Welcome Return to SF Symphony

By Steven Winn

In an absorbing, stirring, and altogether spectacular concert by the San Francisco Symphony, three distinct works formed a textured, multicolored orchestral tapestry. The compelling Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniouk was the master weaver, attentive to both detail and overall design. Even at two hours and 15 minutes — longer than most SFS performances — the evening sped by at Davies Hall on Friday, May 8.

The concert began with the intricate clockwork of Henri Dutilleux’s Métaboles and ended with a fervent and fully committed reading of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. In between came the hometown heroics of Principal Flute Yubeen Kim, in a gracefully dazzling turn in Jacques Ibert’s Flute Concerto.

A collation of five suggestively titled short sections played here with only one pause early on, Dutilleux’s 1964 piece toyed with brief melodic and rhythmic cells to produce a work at once witty and progressively powerful, reminiscent in its range and expressive effects of Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

In “Incantatoire,” the musicians deftly tossed a short melodic figure around, with trumpet calls, woodwind answers, and string pizzicati dancing through sudden slashing chords brightened by the xylophone. The woodwinds posed a quizzical riff, with a softly brushed cymbal in the background. Orchestral color blossomed.

In “Linéaire, marked “Lento moderato,” the strings lumbered into motion, like weary beasts, then came perking to life with an almost tactilely viscous sonority and sky-high harmonics. The bassoons picked up the syncopated beat of the double basses. The rhythms turned infectious, as the exciting “Obsessionnel” enlisted the tuba, timpani, and chattering brasses. The aptly titled “Torpide” brought the strangled cries of muted trombones and the faint, spacious clicks and clangs of a percussion section that seemed bent on expiring. The “Flamboyant” closer tapped with a ferocious dark energy.

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When music calls forth heavy emotions — when it “hales souls out of [people’s] bodies” — it can set us on a healing path.

In his essay on music and grief this week, Tom Jacobs lyrically applies this truth to his own life, writing, “Having my own churning emotions echoed back to me in this way was a stunning experience, one that, perhaps paradoxically, lifted me out of my own pain for a time. Catharsis was the last thing I expected going in, but it’s precisely what I experienced.” SF Symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin also writes about how one song, Leonard Bernstein’s “Some Other Time,” reminds her of her friend Michael Tilson Thomas, and brings forth many memories of him.

Speaking of influences and memories, conductor Dima Slobodeniouk returns to the West Coast to conduct the San Francisco Symphony from May 8-10 and muses on the mix of Russian and Finnish influence in his background. Meanwhile, Andrew Gilbert reports on the restoration of an orchestral work by Earth, Wind & Fire’s Maurice White, part of a tribute concert to the influential musician. Keith Gleason tells the story of the resurrection of R. Nathaniel Dett’s oratorio The Ordering of Moses, which the Oakland Symphony will perform next weekend. And Emily Wilson interviews Dr. German Gonzalez, music director of the Golden Gate Park Band, which is now 140-plus years old and is carrying that legacy into the future.

In a busy week of music, we also covered…

• The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s hilarious musical antics

• Kronos Quartet’s latest program, “Three Bones”

• Recitals from Víkingur Ólafsson and Renée Fleming at Cal Performances

• And the creative partnerships of artist Robert Rauschenberg with choreographers Trisha Brown and Merce Cunningham.

The Excerpt

An article to spark this week’s conversation

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Brings Zany Pop Mastery to San Francisco

By Andrew Gilbert

Long before ukulele tutorials and influencers became YouTube staples, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain knew that the diminutive four-string instrument could bend any song to its whimsical will.

Now more than four decades on, the UOGB continues to spread the ukulele love, and deserves much of the credit for the proliferation of similar ensembles around the world. At Herbst Theatre on Friday, May 1, the seven-member troupe showcased exactly why as it closed out San Francisco Performances’ 46th season.

The UOGB’s winning formula depends as much on vocals as string wizardry. Aside from a few solos, the group doesn’t rely on Jake Shimabukuro-level virtuosity. Instead, crafty arrangements turn each song into a multilayered confection that often introduces unexpected twists in familiar tunes.

For Friday’s concert, that meant hits by Nirvana and Paul Simon, David Bowie and Lady Gaga, TV show theme songs, Broadway numbers and jazz standards all got the zany UOGB treatment.

The group’s secret weapon is Laurie Higgins’ electric bass ukulele work, which provides a thumping bottom for the six unplugged players to push against. His contributions are essential on almost every tune, but he only moved to the foreground briefly, as on the bass break on “You Can Call Me Al,” which featured vocals by Guy Hargreaves with lithe harmonies by his bandmates.

In the visual-gag tradition of Tiny Tim, who turned the ukulele’s eclectic potential into novelty pop stardom some 60 years ago, the orchestra’s tallest member, Peter Brooke Turner, plays the smallest axe, holding down rhythm duties on soprano uke. His big baritone vocals and understated hand gestures brought appropriately over-the-top drama to the 1965 James Bond theme song from “Thunderball.”

Much like their instruments do more with less, the group’s minimalist choreographic touches provided additional punchlines. A rocking arrangement of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” featured the players making jerky moves with their ukuleles, mimicking the guitar-wielding models featured in the song’s iconic MTV music video.

… Read the full article on sfcv.org

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