A centerpiece of the current Cal Performances season has been a campus-wide residency with the artist William Kentridge, which culminates on 17 March the U.S. premiere of SIBYL. Here’s my essay on the making of this unclassifiable new work and its place in Kentridge’s oeuvre:
William Kentridge’s SIBYL: The Reassurance of Uncertainty
“There will be no epiphany.” “Wait again for better gods.” “You will be dreamt by a jackal.” “Heaven is talking in a foreign tongue.”
The oracular messages that course through SIBYL, the most recent performance work by the towering South African artist William Kentridge, tease with tantalizing ambiguity. They seem to wryly provoke an irresistible urge to twist whatever information is at hand into interpretations best suited to our desires….
UPDATE: See Michael Schell’s insightful comments on the new season announcement here.
The Seattle Symphony’s (SSO) 2023-24 season announcement was released today. The orchestra will celebrate two anniversaries: 120 years since its founding and 25 years since the opening of Benaroya Hall, which became home base in 1998. Main areas of focus: broader programming across all SSO series to connect with new audiences, an increase in the presence of living composers, a greater concentration of works new to SSO’s repertoire, and the launch of a new curated series (“Playlist”).
Opening night will replicate part of the SSO’s first-ever concert from December 29, 1903 (Schubert’s “Unfinished” and Massenet’s Overture to Phèdre) and the first concert the musicians played at Benaroya Hall on September 12, 1998 (selections from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung — which featured Jessye Norman back then); Arthur Honegger’s Pastorale d’Été will also be introduced to the SSO’s repertoire; LudovicMorlot conducts.
SSO’s distinguished emeritus will return for another program in June (versus three separate programs led by Morlot in the current season). Aside from appearances by Sunny Xia, SSO’s Douglas F. King Assistant Conductor, the rest of the season will be led by a wide range of visiting conductors — many of whom have already guested here. Alpesh Chauhan and David Robertson led especially impressive performances earlier this season, so it’s nice to see that they will return. Making their debuts on the podium are Kevin John Edusei, Christian Reif, Bernard Labadie, Sarah Hicks, and Andy Einhorn. I’m also looking forward to hearing the much-touted Dalia Stasevska (I wasn’t able to make her SSO debut a year ago). She will be joined by her composer/electric bassist husband, Lauri Porra, in a program of the Sibelius Fifth complemented by Porra’s concerto for electric bass, Entropia, andNautilus by Anna Meredith. Note that this is not a continuation of the halfway-completed Sibelius cycle paired with new commissions that Thomas Dausgaard had launched before the pandemic. That endeavor has been discontinued.
The SSO has been keeping quiet about the ongoing search for a music director. The Press Office states that “the search is well underway and many performances from seasons past, current, and future are all carefully being considered by the Search Committee.”
I also asked about this press release statement: “The 2023/2024 season brings a continuation of creative partnerships that welcome not only the next generation of composers and performers, but new members of our community as well.” The response was that this refers to less traditional programs like the Metropolis evening and the weeklong residency in January of film composer, conductor, and pianist Joe Hisaishi, as well as popular programming with artists like Audra Macdonald. It also refers to programs and series featuring newer voices among the young generation of classical musicians and SSO’s educational programming.
On the new music front: the press release calls out the following among the “more than 35 living composers” who are part of the programming: “Salina Fisher, Nina C. Young, Aaron Jay Kernis, Reena Esmail, Lauri Porra, David Robertson, Steven Mackey, Linda Catlin Smith, Gretchen Yanover, Donghoon Shin, Dorothy Chang, Han Lash, Sarah Gibson, Alexandra Gardner, Angélica Negrón, Fazil Say, Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery, Kevin Puts and more.” The last five named are co-collaborators for the Elements Concerto featuring Joshua Bell, which Marin Alsop will conduct on the closing program of the season. It should also be noted that several of these are part of the Octave 9 season performed in the SSO’s adjacent experimental space. The SSO began expanding this sold-out series during the current season.
A focus on “firsts” is also on the agenda. Remarkably, Bach’s St. John Passion will receive its first-ever SSO performance. Other firsts for the orchestra: Julia Perry’s Short Piece for Orchestra, John Adams’s Harmonium, Salina Fisher’s Rainphase, Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto, Dorothy Chang’s Northern Star, Donghoon Shin’s Of Rats and Men, Fagerlund’s Stonework, Aaron Jay Kernis’s Elegy (For Those We Lost), the previously mentioned ElementsConcerto and Meredith and Porra pieces. A program that looks especially intriguing will be the SSO’s first-ever performance of Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 7 (Antarctic) led by Gemma New and featuring soprano Jennifer Bromagen. This event promises “an immersive multimedia experience of the doomed Terra Nova Expedition” — Robert Falcon Scott’s journey to the Antarctic in 1910-13 — with original visuals from 1912.
Among debuting soloists, I’m delighted to see that the pianist Mahani Teave will be making her SSO debut in Mozart’s K. 466 piano concerto in October. A native of Easter Island and has an amazing story I wrote about for the New York Timeshere. Teave will also inaugurate the new no-intermission Playlist Series, which will be curated by Conrad Tao and Noah Geller.
As far as new commissions, however, I see only one by SSO on the program (versus five commissions this season, four of them orchestral): a not-yet-titled work for solo cello an video design by Gretchen Yanover, which will be premiered on the Octave 9 series. Reena Esmail’s wonderful Concerto for Hindustani Violin, co-created with soloist Kala Ramnath, will make a welcome return after its premiere here last year.
Complete chronological listing of the 2023-24 season:
The composer Tod Machover and ths soprano Joyce DiDonato. Machover’s chamber opera, “Overstory Overture,” stars DiDonato and is an adaptation of Richard Powers’s novel.Credit…Alex Hodor-Lee for The New York Times
Here’s my latest New York Times story on the latest adventure of tech-forward composer Tod Machover, which receives its world premiere Tuesday evening at Alice Tully Hall and features Joyce DiDonato and the Sejong Soloists under Earl Lee:
Musical themes abound in the work of the novelist Richard Powers, often intertwined with science and social issues. The parallel decoding of Bach and DNA (“The Gold Bug Variations”), the saga of an interracial family of classical performers unfolding against the events of the Civil Rights era (“The Time of Our Singing”): A signature of Powers’s novels is the virtuosity with which he weaves these strands into narratives that seem both surprising and inevitable….
David Robertson conducts the Seattle Symphony; photo (c)Brandon Patoc
David Robertson guest conducted the Seattle Symphony last week in a program of Ligeti, Bartók, and Rachmaninoff. My review:
Since it lacks a music director, the Seattle Symphony is presenting a smorgasbord of guest conductors throughout the season. These have been mostly younger artists still early in their careers, but David Robertson’s engagement marked the return of a seasoned conductor already well-liked by the players and in full command of a formidable talent….
Cast members in A Thousand Splendid Suns at Seattle Opera. Photo credit: Sunny Martini
The moving operatic transformation of Khaled Hosseini’s 2007 novel AThousand Splendid Suns by composer Sheila Silver and librettist Stephen Kitvakos had its world premiere over the weekend at Seattle Opera in a powerful production directed by Roya Sadat. I reviewed the opening night performance for Musical America:
Soon after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, Sheila Silver sensed that the story’s combination of tragedy and endurance has an archetypal, larger-than-life quality — exactly what opera excels at expressing. It’s a terrible irony that the work’s lengthy genesis has actually made this story of the oppression of women even timelier than when Silver first considered the idea over a decade ago….[see below]
Music from Samuel Adams’s Movements (for us and them) for the Australian Chamber Orchestra
The profound impact that the pandemic has had on contemporary composition will undoubtedly continue to be felt for years. Samuel Adams points to an important shift in his own musical thinking exemplified by his new work No Such Spring,the world premiere of which Esa-Pekka Salonen is conducting in this week’s program with the San Francisco Symphony, with Conor Hanick as the piano soloist. Salonen will also conduct the symphony Anton Bruckner deemed his “boldest”: the Sixth. My program notes for No Such Spring can be found here.
This weekend, 26-28 February, the Lowell Milken Center for American Jewish Experience at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music is presenting a series of performances and discussions to launch its new Music & Justice series. The events include a revival of Dave Brubeck’s visionary cantata from 1969, The Gates of Justice, performed in dialogue with contemporary compositions around social justice themes. There will also be a day-long public conference featuring prominent scholars and experts.
I wrote a feature on this project for Chorus America, which includes input from two of the three Brubeck sons, Darius and Chris, who will join to play the jazz trio in The Gates of Justice.
At 2pm ET, Juilliard Opera is presenting the amazing opera Proving Up, with music by Missy Mazzoli and a libretto by Royce Vavrek based on the short story by Karen Russell. Mary Birnbaum is the director, and Steven Osgood conducts.
Students and alumni of the Barenboim-Said Akademie, among whom are a number of musicians from Türkiye and Syria, initiated a benefit concert to be held on Monday, February 20, 7.30pm in collaboration with the Pierre Boulez Saal. Focusing on the theme “2Home,” the concert will contribute to efforts aiding those affected by the massive earthquake in these two countries.
The program includes works of Western classical music as well as compositions from the Middle East, especially from Türkiye and Syria.perform at the Pierre Boulez Saal on February 20.
In addition to the concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal on Monday, February 20, there will be three smaller concerts in the foyer of the Barenboim-Said Akademie on February 16, 17, and 18, each at 4pm. Admission to the foyer concerts is free; donations are welcome. Proceeds from all four concerts will go to the Earthquake Relief Fund of the German Red Cross. Call +49 30 4799 7411 for tickets.
Seattle Pro Musica presentsNew Colossus,the latest in its New American Composer Series, a five-concert series celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary with commissions and Seattle residencies by BIPOC composers from across the country. This edition features composer Saunder Choi‘s new work, Never Again, which addresses the issue of gun violence in America. Choi writes: “In the wake of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman wrote: ‘May we not just grieve, but give: May we not just ache, but act’ in her poem Hymn for the Hurting. This call to action is the inspiration behind Never Again, a commentary about the true cost of freedom in a country where the intersection of politics, capitalism, and gun lobbies stands in the way of sensible legislation.”
The program is on Saturday, February 11, 2023 at 7:30 pm at Seattle First Baptist Church, Seattle, WA; pre-concert conversation at 7pm. Tickets here. You can also see it online but need to register before the performance begins here.
Complete Program:
Spark by Eric William Barnum (b. 1979)
New Colossus by Saunder Choi (b. 1988)
My spirit sang all day by Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Never again by Saunder Choi (world premiere)
Earth teach me by Rupert Lang (b. 1948)
Welcome Table by Saunder Choi
Leron, Leron Sinta: traditional Filipino song, arr. by Saunder Choi
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 