Left Coast presents Florence Price’s romantic Piano Quintet alongside works by David Sanford and Chris Castro. With our new project Pathways, Left Coast champions the music of emerging Californian composers. Composers selected for the project will workshop their music with Left Coast musicians next spring, with performances to follow in June 2024. Composers will receive a professional recording of their work –– vital to progress to the next step of their careers. (Interested composers can visit the Left Coast website for application information.) Made possible with generous funding from the California Arts Council.

Left Coast presents Florence Price’s romantic Piano Quintet alongside works by David Sanford and Chris Castro. With our new project Pathways, Left Coast champions the music of emerging Californian composers. Composers selected for the project will workshop their music with Left Coast musicians next spring, with performances to follow in June 2024. Composers will receive a professional recording of their work –– vital to progress to the next step of their careers. (Interested composers can visit the Left Coast website for application information.) Made possible with generous funding from the California Arts Council.

Featuring clarinetists Jerome Simas and Jeff Anderle, this haunting Left Coast Ensemble program pairs Brahms’ autumnal clarinet quintet with Jonathan Russell’s On Sorrow. Inspired by and quoting Tomas Luis de Victoria’s O Vos Omnes, Russell’s quintet explores mortality, consolation, and common humanity across the centuries, finding common themes with one of Brahms’ final and most profound chamber works.

Featuring clarinetists Jerome Simas and Jeff Anderle, this haunting Left Coast Ensemble program pairs Brahms’ autumnal clarinet quintet with Jonathan Russell’s On Sorrow.

Enjoy the full spectrum of sonic luxury, from Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s joyous Clarinet Quintet to Clara Schumann’s velvety piano variations and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s haunting duo, Nachtlieder. And violist Kurt Rohde shines in Derek Bermel's concerto for viola and string quintet, the "seductive, culture-crossing" Soul Garden. (Boston Globe)

This program stars flutist Stacey Pelinka in Soft-Spoken, a world premiere from the multi-talented artist David Dominique, Zeppelin, a duo by Laurie San Martin, and Kurt Rohde’s new remixes of songs by Hildegard and Joni Mitchell, alongside a trio for violin, viola and flute by Beethoven.

Brahms G Major Sonata for Violin and Piano, with Anna Presler and Eric Zivian, broadcast live to kick off Left Coast’s 28th Season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofauShuGhxI&feature=youtu.be

Coming up on June 1 is Left Coast's final subscription concert of our season. Since we anticipate continued restrictions on congregating we are preparing to broadcast the concert to our audience online, either from the concert hall or our homes. One way or the other, we look forward to playing some remarkable music for you.

In the interest of health and safety, the musicians scheduled to play this concert have curated an updated program of solos and duets we can practice and rehearse at home. I'm excited about Sheltering Music, pieces picked for you by Stacey Pelinka, Phyllis Kamrin, Jerome Simas, Eric Zivian, Michel Taddei, Leighton Fong, and Loren Mach:

• Beethoven's rarely performed Piano Sonata, Op. 78, chosen by Eric for its succinct beauty

• Avian music: Peteris Vasks' Landscape with Birds, for flute, and Schumann's Bird as Prophet, for piano 

• Cloisonné a film accompanied by mesmerizing double bass music by Veronika Krausas

• Selections from Diaphonic Suite by Ruth Crawford Seeger and a baroque work by Michel Blavet that Stacey describes as "simple and haunting"

• Leighton and I are finally getting to play some of Jörg Widmann's tiny duos for violin and cello. We have wanted to work on these for years — they are incredibly fun and full of character, also full of surprises.

• Elliott Carter's brief and picturesque Steep Steps for bass clarinet

The Sierra Chamber Society and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble are pleased to announce an extraordinary program of chamber music. Tanya Tomkins, cellist with the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble and principal cellist of Philharmonia Baroque, will join Stevan Cavalier, pianist and director of the Sierra Chamber Society, in Claude Debussy’s magical Sonata for Cello and Piano.  Then, an epic musical event, Olivier Messaien's mysterious, spiritual and virtuosic Quartet for the End of Time will be heard with SF Symphony clarinetist, Jerome Simas, Left Coast violinist Anna Presler, Tanya Tomkins on cello, and Eric Zivian on piano.

Lili Boulanger – Nocturne (from Deux Morceaux)

Claude Debussy – Premiere Rhapsody

Olivier Messiaen – Quartet for the End of Time

Kurt Rohde – One Wing WORLD PREMIERE

Anna Presler in discussion with Elizabeth Pena, Jonathan Sheehan, and Scott MacDougall about Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time at Doug Adams Gallery. Visitors can peruse the current exhibit, LIFE/AFTERLIFE, with works by Ed Aulerich-Sugai and Mark Mitchell.

Schoenberg's Second String Quartet, an exquisite work from 1908, broke new ground in a variety of ways. The most striking innovation is the addition of a soprano for the last two movements. The texts are Stefan George's poems "Litany," about faltering faith, and "Rapture," about transcendence, which begins "I feel air from another planet." To explore how Schoenberg was influenced by Mozart, one of his favorite composers, we're pairing the work with the C Major String Quartet, K. 465. Complementing these masterworks are newly commissioned pieces from Jamie Sampson and John Schott.

With Russ Burnham, Brad Martin, and Leighton Fong

Beethoven C Minor Piano Trio, Hindemith Piano Quartet, and Schubert Arpeggione.

Saxophonist Keith Bohm is offering a varied program of chamber music, including Ida Gotkovsky’s Trio for violin, saxophone, and piano.

Christopher Stark From the Field  WORLD PREMIERE

Laura Schwendinger Artemisia WORLD PREMIERE

We focus on the art and milieu of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi and Depression Era photographer Dorothea Lange, in two chamber operas with projected images that come to life. Laura Schwendinger’s new opera tackles Gentileschi’s struggles and triumphs as she battles inequality and reveals hidden stories. Christopher Stark’s micro opera explores the lives of migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl.

Music of Brahms, Haydn, Boulanger, and Debussy

OLLY WILSON MEMORIAL SYMPOSIUM

Performing Arts - Music | February 16 | 12:30 p.m. | 250 Morrison Hall

12:30-1 Gather and Greet ; 1:00-1:15 Call to Order and Welcome with Professors Cindy Cox and Edmund Campion Department of Music, UC Berkeley;1:15 Candace Johnson — Department of Music, UC Berkeley
There is a Need; 1:30 Robert Greenberg — Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author; 1:45 Anthony Kelly — Composer, Associate Professor of the Practice of Music, Duke University; 2:00 Trevor Weston — Composer, Professor of Music, Drew University; 2:15 Laurie San Martin — Composer, Professor and Chair of the Department of Music, UC Davis; 2:30 Tom Swafford — Violinist, Composer and Arranger

3:00 Professor Ben Brinner and Emeritus Professor Bonnie Wade, Department of Music, UC Berkeley; 3:15 Anthony Brown — Composer, Percussionist, Educator, and Ethnomusicologist; 3:30 Steve Pond — Professor of Ethnomusicology, Cornell University 3:45 Vijay Iyer — Franklin D. And Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts, Harvard University; 4:00 Olly Wilson Video; 4:15 Shannon Dudley — Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Washington

4:30 Performance of Olly Wilson’s Trio for violin, cello & piano, 1976 
Anna Presler – Violin
Leighton Fong – Cello
Allegra Chapman – Piano

4:45-6 reception / Co-sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities