Younis Raza

The Bay Area may be foggy, but the nights will sizzle this summer in a slew of festivals, ranging from Bach favorites to hot-off-the-press premieres. Here is a selection of some popular favorites.   Garden of Memory www.gardenofmemory.com June 21 from 5:00 – 9:00 at...

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  Modern treatment for Brahms—and for an old theater Three vital modern works vied for space with an old Master last Thursday, June 3, in Mill Valley’s charming 145Throckmorten Theatre. The Bay Area-based Left Coast Chamber Ensemble performed living composers and Brahms. ...

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  Five easy pieces? Not! Earplay finished their season in style Monday night at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, with two World premieres and two West Coast premieres. Additionally, Earplay commissioned three of the five works on the program, no small feat for this small organization, and one that reveals their commitment to the next generation of composers....

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  Oakland Symphony Season Finale Michael Morgan and the Oakland East Bay Symphony closed their season May 14 on an uplifting note. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with its “Ode to Joy,” filled Oakland’s Paramount Theater with a paean to brotherhood. Morgan enriched that theme by opening with a song cycle by Jake Heggie based on...

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A tip of the hat to Stravinsky The New York Philharmonic held a three-week Igor Stravinsky festival this month, with eight different programs under the baton of Valery Gergiev, acclaimed general director of the Mariinsky Theatre and principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. It has been a high point of the Philharmonic’s season. And one of the high points of that festival was Oedipus Rex, arguably Stravinsky’s most popular neoclassical endeavor,...

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Freedom from constraint… The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players ended their season last week with a program titled “His Own Space of Freedom,” with a demonstration at ODC April 25 and a performance at Herbst Theater the next evening. Philippe Hurel’s Figures libres pits constraint against freedom. A jazzy array of rhythmic figures—reminiscent of bebop improvisation—found common ground between the grouped instruments. Bass clarinet, oboe and...

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