SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
In Uncertain Times
8pm, Saturday, October 15, 2016
Park Presidio United Methodist Church, 4301 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger and Martha Stoddard, conducting
Program
Roberto Becheri
I Costruttori (The Builders), a Short Cantata for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
(2016, Roberto Becheri)
Liisa Davilla, Soprano
Martha Stoddard
The Song of the Loon (2015)
Lisa Scola Prosek
Ubi Sunt (Where Have They Gone) from "Lucaria" (2016)
Madrigal
Aria
Lisa Scola Prosek, Soprano
Intermission
Davide Verotta
To the Point (2016)
Mark Alburger
Variations on The Romanesca, Op. 251 (2016)
I. Luis de Narvaez (1490-1547) - Gardeme las Vacas (1538)
II. Braye Lute Book (b. c. 1530) - Pavana (Variations on the Romanesca, 1560)
III. Dublin Virginal Book (b. c. 1540) - Variations on The Romanesca (1570)
IV. Frescobaldi (1583-1643) - Aria della Romanesca (1616)
V. England (b. c. 1620) - Greensleeves to a Ground (1650)
VI. Johannes Pachelbel (1653-1708) - Canon in D (1694)
VII. Henry Purcell (1659-1695) - Dido and Aeneas (1689)
VIII. J.S. Bach (1685-1750) - Organ Passacaglia in C Minor (1713)
IX. F.J. Haydn (1732-1809) - Symphony No. 94 ("Surprise") (1791)
X. W.A. Mozart (1756-1791) - "Ah, Vous Dirai-Je Maman" (1781)
XI. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) - Symphony No. 7 (1812)
XII. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) - Piano Quintet ("Trout") (1819)
Stardust
True of Voice Overture (2016)
1. Get Your Hands Up
2. Love Adversity
3. Collateral Murder
4. Queen's Plea
5. Opening of the Mouth
6. Prison Escape
7. Opet Festival
8. Arrows of the Heart
9. Maat
SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold Associate Music Director
Martha Stoddard Associate Conductor
Piccolo / Flute / Alto Flute / Soprano and Alto Recorder
Harry Bernstein
Bruce Salvisberg
Martha Stoddard
Oboe
Stardust
Clarinet
Michael Kimbell
Bassoon
Michael Garvey
Trumpet
Michael Cox
Horn
Bob Satterford
Tuba
Aaron Wallace
Soprano
Lisa Scola Prosek
Mezzo-Soprano
Liisa Davila
Piano / Prepared Piano
Lisa Scola Prosek
Davide Verotta
Percussion
Victor Flaviani
Lisa Scola Prosek
Martha Stoddard
Anne Szabla
Violin I
Monika Gruber
Violin II
Kristen Kline
Viola
Nansamba Ssensalo
Cello
Ariella Hyman
Robin Reynolds
String Bass
John Beeman
MARK ALBURGER (b. April 2, 1957, Upper Darby, PA) studied with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. He is Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and The Opus Project, Conductor of San Francisco Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and Adjunct Professor in Music Literature and Theory at Diablo Valley College. Alburger has been the recipient of many honors, awards, and commissions -- including yearly ASCAP Standard Awards; grants from Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, MetLife, and Theatre Bay Area; funding from the Marra, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Getty Foundations; and performances by ensembles and orchestras throughout the world. Alburger's concert and dramatic compositions combine atonal, collage, neoclassic, pop, and postminimal sensibilities -- often in overall frameworks troped on pre-existent material. His complete works (256 opus numbers to date, including the recent To Those Who Come After: Three Elegies, on texts by Bertolt Brecht, to be performed at Farifield's Missouri Street Theatre next February) are being issued on recordings from New Music. 500+ videos of his compositions can be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as many other websites. San Fernando Hub: Fresno, Op. 46, No. 1, will be heard at Center for New Music on October 29, and The Great Widow (Alma Maria Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel, Part II) presented by Walnut Creek's Lesher Center next November.
The Romanesca is a Spanish chord progression dating back to at least to 1538. Originally known as O Guárdame las Vacas (Oh, Guard the Cows), it entails the succession b3 / b7 / 1 / 5 cycling around again as b3 / b7 / 1-5 / 1, which can also be heard as 1 / 5 / 6 / 3, etc. (the beginning of Johannes Pachelbel's Canon in D / Paul McCartney's I Want to Hold Your Hand, and close to the rock cliche 1 / 5 / 6 / 4, familiar from Sting's Every Breath You Take, Bono's With Or Without You, et. al.). This is an early usage of passacaglia ("walking down the street") variation over a bassline, not formally designated as such until 1606, and of theme-and-variations in general, which likely arose c. 1590 -- the notion of improvisation evidently extending back to sentient prehistory. The 55 VARIATIONS ON THE ROMANESCA take these basic melodic-harmonic formulae and run in a madcap manner through variant works of composers ranging from Luis de Narvaez (1490-1547) and Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) to David Bowie (1947-2016) and Mark Alburger The first 12 variants will be performed.
ROBERTO BECHERI received his Doctorate in Composition, at the Conservatory of Florence, Italy, and also a degree in Literature from the University of Bologna. His Composition studies were with Gaetano Giani Luporini, Carlo Prosperi, Armando Gentilucci, and Giacomo Manzoni. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatory of Florence. He also teaches musical analysis with the Guido D'Arezzo Foundation, in Arezzo. His compositions include works for theater, and "microtheatrical" works, a musical genre he created, characterized by music purposefully bare of all elements of lyric opera. Roberto Becheri is currently collaborating on Italy's National Edition of the Works of Palestrina. He is the author of In attesa dell'alba a treatise on the intersection of his various interests (philosophy, aesthetics, history of religions, acoustics, and harmony).
I COSTRUTTORI (THE BUILDERS), a Short Cantata for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra, conforms to the composer's lyrical storyline, as a series of separate but connected ideas give shape to the music. Its unity is based on a "12-different-sounds" (quite distinct from 12-tone) thematic formula, where the collection is freely exploited as melodic fragments, elements for chords, passacaglia, etc. The stately Italian lyrics consist of seven hendecasyllable / octosyllabic quatrains rhymed in various ways.
Do you see the old Sanctuary? It’s collapsing.
Do you see signs of corruption?
Madness and chaos triumph nowadays:
mankind lost reason now.
It’s the great time of the beginning
we must build a new Temple,
to save mankind and world by devastation.
Let’s consecrate ourselves to the task of progress.
Let’s visit on the Earth
rich in splendor places:
seas, rivers, hills, valleys…
Let’s search them with the heart.
Of each place, of each space
let’s observe the horizon.
That union of heaven and earth
that enlightens us the front.
The Sanctuary, the new Temple,
where we will build it?
And what aspect should it have?
What form we will give it?
We’ll build it here and everywhere:
as a crystal and a flower,
as a human being and sun,
merging one another beauty and love.
On the ruins of the venerable Temple
here and everywhere let’s prepare construction sites.
This is the joyful time, the time
of us, Builders: let's start!
LISA SCOLA PROSEK has composed and produced eight operas with librettos in Italian and English. The Lariat, January 2015, San Francisco, was awarded The NY Center for Contemporary Opera Award. In 2012, Daughter of the Red Tzar, written for acclaimed tenor John Duykers, premiered to capacity audiences, and is currently on the outreach season with Long Beach Opera. Awards for Scola Prosek's operas include The San Francisco Arts Commission, The Center for Cultural Innovation, The California Arts Council, and the NEA. Lisa graduated from Princeton University in Music Composition, studying with Edward Cone, Milton Babbitt, Lukas Foss, and Gaetano Luporini at the Conservatorio Cherubini. Also a lyric soprano, Scola Prosek studied voice with Margherita Kalil of the Met. Her operas are available from Theodore Front Publishing, and the libraries of Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Public Library.
UBI SUNT (WHERE HAVE THEY GONE), FROM "LUCARIA," consists of two choral excerpts from the opera, in a version for chamber ensemble. This genre of poetry from classical antiquity ponders the loss and memory of the departed. The Madrigal is sung by the chorus to Lucaria, with the Aria as Lucaria 's response.
MARTHA STODDARD has been the Artistic Director of the Oakland Civic Orchestra since 1997. She is Director of Instrumental Music at Lick-Wilmerding High School and Director of the John Adams Young Composers Program at the Crowden Music Center in Berkeley, California. Recent engagements include conducting opera premieres by Lisa Prosek and John Bilotta. She has appeared frequently as associate conductor, flutist and composer with the San Francisco Composers' Chamber Orchestra. Recent commissions include works for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Sierra Ensemble, Oakland Civic Orchestra, Community Women's Orchestra, and the San Francisco Wind Festival. Stoddard is a four-time recipient of ASCAPlus Awards and holds music degrees from Humboldt State University and San Francisco State University. She is published by Tetractys of London, UK.
THE SONG OF THE LOON is an attempt to capture the incantation of the loon heard during cheerful summer walks along the Hudson River in rural upstate New York.
STARDUST is "an animist radical faerie composer living in the somewhat embattled and mythical sanctuary of San Francisco This past summer featured bouts of sciatica which sometimes interfered with (pain!) and sometimes enabled (bed-ridden!) composition of the time-traveling TRUE OF VOICE OVERTURE. Travels of the more geographical variety inspired Stardust's previous SFCCO offerings: A la recherche des danses perdues and Railway Sonata. Other works include chamber music and symphonic music prepared for encouraging musician friends at events such as the Humboldt Chamber Music Workshops and welcoming ensembles such as the Opus Project Orchestra, the Golden Gate Symphony, and of course the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. You may occasionally mind Stardust playing the Hautbois or the Cor anglé. ;-)"
TRUE OF VOICE is a musical dance theatre production in development. Set in ancient Egypt and modern times, the spectacle will include incidental music performed by an ancient Egyptian orchestra playing period instruments and a hip hop orchestra. A powerful polyamorous Egyptian priestess queen magically transports three pivotal people through time to assist her king and his male lover with the pressing political and social needs of the Old Kingdom, despite the efforts of a mysterious spy who tries to thwart their plans. Transformed by their experiences in the past, the trio return energized to create change in our present-day world, each in their own unique way. These key characters are an innocent young black man shot by police, a lesbian couple turned out from a San Francisco restaurant on their tenth anniversary, and incarcerated transgender private Chelsea Manning awaiting trial for leaking military secrets. The True of Voice Overture is the composer's attempt to spark composition of the incidental music for True of Voice. The overture goes scene by scene up to the intermission, with plans for a later Entr'acte covering the post-intermission scenes. "Selections from the overture evoke theatrical scenes from the production in miniature, including "Get Your Hands Up" (listen for police gunfire), "Love Adversity" (a lesbian love song), "Collateral Murder" (this time 30mm cannon fire), "Queen's Plea" (ritualistic), "Opening of the Mouth" (more ritualistic), "Prison Escape" (Chelsea's path to ancient Egypt), "Opet Festival" (dancing and procession), "Arrows of the Heart" (love song for the king and his male lover), and "Maat" (the Egyptian equivalent of truth and righteousness). The True of Voice Overture will no doubt whet your artistic appetite for the production of True of Voice the musical appearing in workshop during 2017 and, assuming funding, in mature theatrical glory by 2018 (more info at http://ritualart.org/wordpress/true-of-voice/)."
Born in an Italian town close to Milano, DAVIDE VEROTTA moved to San Francisco in his late 20's. He studied piano at the Milano and San Francisco conservatories; and composition at San Francisco State University and the University of California at Davis. He is actively involved in the new-music scene in San Francisco where he also teaches piano and composition. Recent compositions include works for orchestra, string quartet, brass quintet, winds, piano/two pianos, organ, percussion. His writing has been defined as alternating lyrical and dreaming landscapes with overwhelming musical motions; his idiom is a mix of neo-tonality, modern techniques, classical structures and form experimentation. He is recipient of multiple ASCAP Plus and Zellerbach foundation awards and winner/runner up of international music competitions. For more information, please visit his web site at http://www.davideverotta.com.
TO THE POINT is a composition designed as a short introduction, or final or interlude piece in a symphonic program. It is roughly divided in two sections. First a slow prelude, where we hear the main theme of the piece in the strings, followed by a descending, meandering melody in the winds, and a restatement of the main theme. Second a faster section that takes the piece in a somewhat breathless trajectory culminating in a restatement of the original theme by the whole orchestra. The piece might be read as a metaphor for a life journey, if somehow the destiny of that life had been written at birth.
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***
Another superb series of performances,
on barely the
215th day of summer,
high 71 --
Pleasant Hill, 74
Pinole, 67
San Rafael, 63
San Francisco, 68
(also 3rd precip-- .27 inch -- since the rainfall year began July 1, for a total .61 since then)
-- printing the
program at
Cybercopy,
lunching locally,
and heading to the resounding evening,
with an adventure south to
Pacifica's Shelter Cove added in for good measure,
dizzingly beginning composition of
The Decameron: Sixth Day, Op. 257
Novel III: Monna Nonna de' Pulci silences the Bishop of Florence
and
Jonah, Op. 258
I. Fish Story
upon return...
