Arts Listings
Bay Area Composers Featured at San Francisco Event
The San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra will present a panoply of music by Bay Area composers Katrina Wreede, Lisa Scola Prosek, Alexis Alrich, Loren Jones, Erling Wold, and Chris Carrasco, this Saturday at Old First Church in San Francisco.
Mark Alburger, himself a Bay Area composer, and conductor for many of the pieces, commented on the program, “Katie Wreede’s piece, ‘Children’s Garden,’ will be performed by Alexis Alrich on piano, the composer (who’s from the East Bay) on viola and Lisa Scola Prosek, voice--an ongoing trio.”
“That will be the only chamber music,” said Alburger. “The rest will be chamber orchestra. Lisa Scola Prosek is a composer of Bel Canto for the 21st century, and there will be two selections from her opera, Bel Sagor, which will be premiered at the end of May, about the devil meeting his match in a witchy woman--and having a horrible time of it! There’s a duet and full ensemble, with soprano Eliza O’Malley in full voice and Maria Mikheyenko also up in the stratisphere, plus Aurelio Viscarra, tenor, and Micah Epps, bass.”
The third composer will be Loren Jones, “with selections from his continuing 12-movement essay about life and times in San Francisco, Dancing on the Brink of the World, from brothels and barrooms on the Barbary Coast, and the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, like carny music, going to ‘the outer districts,’ in chilly, muted tones.”
Alexis Alrich also is “serially introducing a larger piece, which she will conduct, with Matthew Cannon as soloist on a five-octave marimba. For Alexis, tonality is the music of the future!”
Erling Wold’s revival of an older piece, “Baron Ochs,” will follow. “Erling’s one of the most wonderful post-Minimalist composers around,” said Alburger, “whose music is played in Europe. When Alexis Alrich premiered her piece, ‘California Oaks,’ Erling joked that ‘I’d better revive “Baron Ochs”’—and now he is!”
The concert will be concluded by “a 19-year-old up-and-comer,” as Alburger put it—Chris Carrasco, with “The Mind Suite,” which Alburger describes as “a descent into madness! Chris is a fine percussionist, with a drum and bugle corps background. He played with The Blue Devils. But he’s Philip Glass-influenced. We wanted the grand finale to be a lot of fun, with some real in-your-face rhythmic music.”
SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
8 p.m. Saturday. $12-$15. Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento St. and Van Ness, San Francisco. (415) 474-1608.
www.oldfirstconcerts.org or www.sfcco.org.
