Younis Raza – Page 60 – Repeat Performances

May 6, 2008

Mihaela Ursuleasa at Herbst Theatre

San Francisco Performances presents legendary pianist in concert Lightning struck from a clear sky Tuesday night, May 6, at San Francisco's Herbst Theater, as thunder rolled from the keyboard of young piano sensation Mihaela Ursuleasa. I was stunned to hear such fierce and passionate playing. A demanding program of Medtner, Schumann and Rachmaninoff was all one could ask for, as the pianist flowed from tender opening to ferocious...

Categories: music

April 7, 2008

Anne-Sophie Mutter at San Francisco Symphony

Anne-Sophie Mutter brings schwing to symphony hall When a great artist performs one gets to ask questions of interpretation and style and artistic integrity. Anne-Sophie Mutter had that in spades last Monday at S.F.’s Davies Symphony Hall, wowing the crowd in three Brahms violin sonatas and returning, after multiple standing ovations, for four encores. Spilling out of her tight trademark dress, she appeared daisy fresh but dead serious. Her long-time accompanist Lambert...

Categories: music

March 5, 2008

Sarah Cahill at Berkeley Arts Festival

Sarah Cahill gives moving piano tribute to Ornstein in Berkeley premiere Well-known pianist and radio show host Sarah Cahill played a program dedicated to the later works of Leo Ornstein at Berkeley Arts Festival’s new temporary digs, on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. Most of the material at the Friday, Mar. 5 concert has never before been performed, and the concert coincides with Cahill’s soon-to-be-released CD of Ornstein’s later works. Ornstein’s life...

Categories: music

January 18, 2008

Kronos Quartet in Terry Riley’s Sun Rings

Kronos performs dreamy plasma at Stanford In 2001 the Kronos quartet was contacted by NASA to see if the group was interested in “the sounds of space,” recordings of plasma waves from spacecraft. A plasma is a gas so hot that its electrons have been separated, transforming the neutral gas into a sea of charged ions. Our solar system is filled with a tenuous plasma, a solar wind that laps at the shores of worlds and interacts with planetary magnetic fields....

Categories: music

January 10, 2008

Deborah Voight sings Strauss and Barber with San Francisco Symphony

Lustrous mix of music by SF Symphony In a concert of Strauss, Knudsen, Barber and Beethoven at San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall last Saturday, Beethoven was the clear winner. Michael Tilson Thomas set aside the score and threw himself into the conducting with a palpable directness that illuminated each musical strand....

Categories: music

June 1, 2007

New Contemporary Opera at Thick House

Love takes a spill Friday night saw the premiere of two works of opera with video backdrops at Thick House, San Francisco’s avant garde Potrero Hill theater. Clarinetist and composer Peter Josheff wrote “Francesca’s Complaint” to a libretto by Bay Area poet Jaime Robles. This fully-staged aria from Inferno, their opera-in-progress, featured soprano Eliza O’Malley accompanied by pianist Alexis Aldrich. Combining expressive movement with powerful singing,...

Categories: opera