New Music Recitals 2010 Newsletter 1

December 15, 2009

Volume 1

Midori

Meet the Composers!

Click on each composer's name to read his biography.

HUW WATKINS Coruscation and Reflection
KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI Sonata No. 2
TOSHIO HOSOKAWA Vertical Time Study III
JAMES MACMILLAN After the Tryst
JOHN ADAMS Road Movies

Cultivating an audience for music outside the mainstream

by Ruth Felt

I founded San Francisco Performances thirty years ago with a mission of presenting acclaimed and emerging artists in classical instrumental and vocal recitals, chamber music, jazz and contemporary dance performances. Our goals include commissioning and presenting new music and dance and serving and building audiences through arts education programs.

We have worked with hundreds of artists and ensembles and introduced many to our audiences for the first time. I was asked to write about how we have managed to find and cultivate an audience for performances outside the mainstream or in other words, presenting programs that are out of the ordinary and risky endeavors with limited popular appeal and financial hazard. Many factors contribute to this result including careful business planning in terms of expenses undertaken, realistic earned revenues through ticket sales and donations/contributions raised to make up the difference.

But first and foremost it is the quality of the artists, both well known and not, and essentially the distinctive and excellence of the programs they perform and share with an audience. It is special joy to collaborate with an artist like Midori with her contemporary music projects. She not only brings the highest standards of musicianship and scholarship to them, but because she is a celebrated classical performer, she attracts many people to her programs and they are open and eager to learn from her and to experience and share in her passion for new music.

Over the years we have been able to build a loyal and informed audience who trust our choices and are willing to take a chance on what we present even if they do not know the artist or the repertory. Saying this I know that this audience base is not large enough and it is an ongoing challenge to continue to develop it.

One of the ways we work on building new audiences is through our arts education projects and artist in residency programs. Our resident ensemble the Alexander String Quartet with resident music historian Robert Greenberg created a unique Saturday morning series in 1994 which continues every season. It features a complete performance of a string quartet preceded by a 30 minute lecture on each half of the program. This combination of learning and listening at 10 am on Saturdays is very popular.

Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg on stage at the Herbst Theatre.

What I am finding in current times is that unique artist driven projects are more and more the trend and are having success. These activities are not mainstream and are often being performed in unusual venues and not in the standard concert hall or theatre. They regularly feature contemporary repertoire and include the composer's participation and also older works that have been neglected are introduced. The programs have multiple facets with lectures, panels and open master classes. I believe these projects are energizing the classical music field today and are bringing in new, younger, and diverse audiences. In our programming at San Francisco Performances we are striving to include a greater number of innovative ideas outside the mainstream.

Ruth A. Felt is Founder and President of San Francisco Performances, a non profit organization established in 1979 that presents chamber music, vocal and instrumental recitals, jazz and contemporary dance. Prior to this, she was Company Administrator for the San Francisco Opera (1971-79); Assistant Concert Manager for the UCLA Department of Fine Arts Productions; and an assistant speechwriter for Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. A native of Willmar, Minnesota, Felt receive her Bachelor of Arts Degree from UCLA in 1961. She resides in San Francisco, where she has served on the boards of Chamber Music America and the International Society for the Performing Arts, and was a founding board member of Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS.

20th Century Timeline

* Readers are invited to submit questions about contemporary music in general or Midori's all-contemporary recital in particular. Time and space permitting, Midori will answer some of the questions on these Newsletter pages. Please address your questions to violin@gotomidori.com, or you may post them on the Wall of Midori's Facebook page!

Photo Credits
Midori: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
Watkins: © ArenaPAL / Hanya Chlala
Penderecki: Mark Beblot
Hosokawa: © Schott Promotion / P. Andersen
MacMillan: © ArenaPAL / Eric Richmond
Adams: Margaret Mitchell
Ruth Felt & Midori: Thomas John Gibbons
ASQ & Greenberg: Cate Thomason-Redus

Midori's Notes on the Recital Program

HUW WATKINS
Coruscation and Reflection (1998)

Coruscation and Reflection by Huw Watkins demonstrate moods that are polar opposites. However, as with Yin and Yang, the two works are also complementary in enhancing both the excitement and tranquility in the atmosphere. After the premiere of Coruscation in 1998, performed by violinist Daniel Bell (of the Petersen Quartet), the composer decided that it needed a companion work, hence the birth of Reflection. Each can be performed separately, but they are usually presented as a pair, which is also the composer's preference. Both works are characterized by the use of the pentatonic scale (five pitches per octave).

KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI
Violin Sonata No. 2 (1999)

Krzysztof Penderecki's Second Sonata will likely be considered as one of the greatest duo works written for violin and piano at the turn of the 21st century. Premiered in April 2000 by Anne-Sophie Mutter and her duo partner, Lambert Orkis, the Sonata exhibits complexities amidst logic, and vice-versa, along with surprises and unpredictability; the combination of these elements highlights the creativity and the craft of the composer.

TOSHIO HOSOKAWA
Vertical Time Study III for Violin and Piano (1994)

"Music is the place where notes and silence meet." - Toshio Hosokawa

In his early twenties, Hosokawa studied in Berlin for several years with the exiled Korean composer Isang Yun, and the post-war European style remains a major influence of his music, alongside intrinsic Eastern aesthetic principles.

JAMES MACMILLAN
After the Tryst (1988)

James MacMillan's compositional output reflects his interest in his Scottish origins and its folk culture, as well as his traditional religious beliefs. Much of his oeuvre makes reference to these elements, and After the Tryst is no exception.

In 1984, inspired by The Tryst, William Soutar's account of an intensely passionate yet expiring love, MacMillan set the poem to music in the style of an old Scottish ballad. A few years later, the composer recreated the folk song's melody in two classical compositions: the violin/piano fragment After the Tryst in 1988 and, the following year, a larger orchestral work Tryst.

JOHN ADAMS
Road Movies (1995)

Road Movies is quintessential John Adams, although chamber music does not occupy a large portion of his work. After decades of composing large-scaled operas and orchestral works, Adams discovered a gateway into more melodic writing in the early 1990s and ventured into composing for the chamber setting.

Adams refers to Road Movies as "travel music". The first and third movements utilize a rocking, or swinging, rhythm, illustrating the beat of driving on the open road. Adams's distinctive Minimalist and Serialist techniques are in evidence throughout the work.