Shameless Promotion of Local Artists: Bay Area Recordings in 2020

Welcome to SFCV’s 2020 year-end roundup of recordings launched this 12 months by native artists. Yearly we’re amazed on the musical riches in our personal again yard, and this 12 months extra so than ever. Regardless of the strictures of the lockdown, artists managed to create a variety of brand-new music and discover artistic methods to document it, whereas many organizations scoured their archives for nice, unreleased music that deserved a recent launch.

Our checklist isn’t restricted to classical music: We now have somewhat little bit of all the things to supply. We are able to’t declare that our roster is complete, however we tried to present a stable pattern of the realm’s musical wealth. There’s a lot nice music right here that we aren’t in a position to hear or evaluation over the 12 months, and that is a method for us to catch up.

We provide this itemizing with no editorializing or critiques: Blurbs are drawn primarily from artist and label promotional supplies. Album titles and canopy photos are linked to websites with extra info and buying choices. We hope you discover one thing new and attention-grabbing as you peruse the itemizing. Take an opportunity and benefit from the variety of sounds accessible right here. Go to us on Facebook so as to add your feedback and options, and please share this along with your musical associates.

Mark Abel

Sonoma-based composer Mark Abel’s fifth album for the Delos label  presents three chamber works and a cycle setting verses of the highly effective and tragic Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, for the primary time in English translation. Chamber luminaries David Shifrin, Fred Sherry and Carol Rosenberger ship Abel’s Clarinet Trio and Instinct’s Dance, whereas violinist Sabrina-Vivian Höpcker and pianist Dominic Cheli collaborate on The Elastic Hours. Grammy-winning soprano Hila Plitmann is entrance and heart on the 4 Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Gramophone noticed: “The songs take full benefit of Plitmann’s wondrous voice, which gleams in all registers, particularly when she picks out notes within the stratosphere. Her consideration to which means suffuses each phrase.”

Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio

Trio for Violin, Piano and Percussion is a main instance of the largely self-taught composer’s later works, by which he moved away from open types and graphic notations in the direction of an strategy, whereas not precisely conventional, might be communicated in conventional notation. The latter strategy offers the composer extra direct management of the music and extra outlined formal qualities. Shere makes the most effective use of such an exemplary ensemble, crafting an announcement that sounds recent even almost 1 / 4 century after its debut. This Trio is an outlier in Shere’s physique of labor. The music is gestural and dreamlike, tangential to the work of Shere’s shut good friend Lou Harrison and even Claude Debussy — a cool night breeze by means of a window. The work is one thing of an summary of Shere’s aesthetic ancestors, even opening with an unmistakable quote from the music of one other private good friend, Virgil Thomson.

Alma Issues

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV Review: Berkeley vocalist Jeff Weinmann has spearheaded the mission Alma Matters for the previous decade, corralling a talent-laden circle of associates into the studio for recording classes leading to a wonderful eponymous album and quite a few movies. Recorded simply earlier than the shelter in place order, the most recent launch is “Gap within the Sky,” a track composed by Brazilian-born guitarist Ian Faquini with lyrics and association by Natalie Cressman (who contributes vocals and the trombone solo). Impressed by the expertise of the Northern California wildfires, it’s a well timed anthem about sustaining hope within the face of pure disasters. The piece contains the same old spectacular Alma Issues crew, with tenor saxophonist Peter Apfelbaum, trumpeter Erik Jekabson, trombonist Jeff Cressman, and bassist Steve Hogan, as effectively Brazilian percussionist Douglas Alonso. The video stars Vanessa Isaac, a Brazilian actress, singer, dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, and author.

American Bach Soloists

This soothing compilation of serenely lovely music by Bach, Corelli, and Handel is the sonic equal of a weekend at a spa. Whether or not you take heed to this album as snug background music, for unwinding and meditation, and even to lull you into peaceable calm, this choice from ten ABS recordings is prone to turn out to be an on the spot favourite. Featured solo performers embrace cellists Elisabeth Le Guin & Tanya Tomkins; flutist Sandra Miller; harpsichordists John Butt & Michael Sponseller; oboist John Abberger; recorder gamers Aldo Abreu, Dan Laurin, Judith Linsenberg, and Hanneke van Proosdij; viola da gambists Mary Springfels & Brent Wissick; violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock, Katherine Kyme, & Elizabeth Wallfisch; violists Anthony Martin & Elly Winer; violone participant Steven Lehning; and vocalists Ian Howell, Judith Malafronte, and William Sharp.

Brian Baumbusch

Two new distant recording works by Alameda-based composer Brian Baumbusch will likely be highlighted on an upcoming album launch by Different Minds, scheduled for launch December 18, 2020 (particulars pending). Commissioned by the College of California Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble, Isotropes was written within the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and consists of a sequence of various musical fragments chosen and recorded by every taking part musician from their respective houses throughout quarantine. Collectively, these fragmented recordings mix to create an bold 25-minute work for big ensemble. Additionally featured on the album is Tides, a chunk commissioned by the Artistic Work Fund in collaboration with video artist Ian Winters and recorded remotely in lockdown following the cancellation of its March stay premiere. Listen to the pieces here.

Brian Andres Trio Latino

San Francisco drummer Brian Andres beforehand launched three albums along with his Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel octet. The Mayan Suite is his first with Trio Latino, that includes pianist Christian Tumalan (co-leader of Grammy-winning Pacific Mambo Orchestra) and bassist Aaron Germain. Repertoire contains originals (by Tumalan, Germain), tunes by Chick Corea and Mike Mainieri, and a pair of requirements; the album’s centerpiece is the title monitor, a five-part collection of hard-grooving miniatures that packs totally realized statements in addition to satisfying improvisation right into a exceptional seven-and-a-half-minute journey.

Broadway by the Bay

Broadway by the Bay ends the 12 months by releasing House, Hope & Holidays, a vacation musical celebration recorded by its alumni artists. The album options 21 seasonal favorites, sung by over 65 alumni artists and musicians. The album was recorded utterly remotely from the artists’ houses, and combined remotely, to make sure adherence to the native well being division protocols. The result’s a really inspiring and joyous assortment of vacation music that embodies the artistry, generosity, and collaboration which might be the hallmarks of Broadway by the Bay.

Theodore Bucholz and Paula Fan

Henry Hadley, the San Francisco Symphony’s first conductor, was one of the crucial well-liked composers of the early Twentieth Century. Sadly, his works have since be largely forgotten, nevertheless it definitely is just not due to any lack of high quality of the work. These are fantastic items that hopefully will now once more get no less than of little bit of the popularity that they deserve, with delicate performances by Theodore Buchholz, cello, and Paula Fan, piano. Theodore Buchholz, who studied on the SF Conservatory of Music, is the cello professor on the College of Arizona, the place he additionally serves as string space coordinator, string chamber music coordinator, and the director of the UA String Mission. As a performer, Theodore Buchholz has been lauded by newspaper critics as a virtuosic cellist with a heat lovely sound. He has carried out in outstanding venues from New Yorks Lincoln Middle to worldwide halls in Italy and Tokyo, and in numerous venues throughout the US. He toured the just lately commissioned concerto The Excessive Songs by Carter Pann, and carried out Brahms’s Double Concerto and Beethovens Triple Concerto with orchestras throughout the U.S.

Kev Selection

Classically educated pianist, MC, producer, and bandleader Kev Selection wears many hats, and all of them match. Blessed with prodigious expertise, plus the talent and dedication to his craft to drag it off, the Oakland-based artist is redefining what it means to be a musician at the present time. The artist was in the midst of recording one other mission when the pandemic hit and lockdown sidelined that album. In response, Selection composed and recorded this launch in simply two weeks. Our reviewer wrote, Selection’s achievement on his new album Social Distancing is exceptional. Launched through Bandcamp on April 10, it’s an album that isn’t a lot ripped from the headlines as reported from the midst of the SIP stress cooker … Apart from the pace and the standard of the manufacturing, what’s most spectacular about Social Distancing is the best way by which Selection managed to manifest such an important neighborhood in a second of utmost isolation.”

Cosa Nostra Strings

Gradual & Regular Data and Jazz Mafia announce the co-release of genre-bending chamber ensemble Cosa Nostra Strings self-titled debut album, Cosa Nostra Strings. A becoming Mafia-nod to the Sicilian crime syndicate, and translated as “our factor,” Cosa Nostra is a band of musical misfits who discover widespread floor between classical and chamber music, steel, hip hop, R&B, jazz, drum & bass and EDM. That includes a cadre of superlative musicians together with violinist Shaina Evoniuk, violist/vocalist Keith Lawrence, cellist Lewis Pazner, multi-percussionist Aaron Kierbel, and bassist/trombonist Adam Theis, the music showcases just about all the things a string band can do. “By way of the recording course of, the band’s sound actually advanced into one thing way more cohesive than ever earlier than,” notes Evoniuk. “Type of like a visit all over the world, touchdown you, ultimately, at dwelling.”

Dame Drummer

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: Producer, drummer, songwriter and vocalist Dame Drummer is a crucial power on the East Bay’s black music scene who’s contributed to a number of the most attention-grabbing latest recordings drawing on R&B, jazz and hip hop (like keyboardist Kev Selection’s latest album Social Distancing). His new five-track mission Aye Yai Yai is a glossy, bracing and quietly raging session that looks like a direct response to the racist confrontations and police abuse taking part in out on our streets and public areas. Whether or not he’s capturing the demise of a relationship in “Burn It Down” or calmly portray a turn-the-tables racial revenge fantasy on “Get What You Gave,” Drummer delivers seductive, resolutely cool beats.

Sally Decker and Brendan Glasson

Lara Downes

A musical reflection on social justice, progress and equality from Lara Downes and associates. On this time of worldwide unrest and upheaval, Downes turns to freedom songs and spirituals that invoke our human capability for optimism, activism, and unification within the face of disaster. In Downes’s phrases: “We’re sturdy. We’re resourceful. We now have come by means of darkness into mild, again and again. Let’s lean on our ancestors and the teachings they’ve taught us about hope, braveness, and above all unity.” Read our story in regards to the recording.

Beth Duncan

The third album by late-blooming Sacramento jazz vocalist is a group of sensible new songs by the late-blooming Dutch-born, Oakland-based composer Martine Tabilio, organized by Jacam Manricks and that includes pianist Joe Gilman, bassist Matt Robinson, and drummer Rick Lotter . Duncan was primed early on for a profession as jazz singer (together with critical examine with famous Oakland vocal instructor Judy Davis) when she developed vocal nodes. She transitioned to a profession in broadcasting and now works in its place host for Capital Public Radio’s present affairs present Perception. Her return to music dates again to a Fiftieth-birthday get together efficiency, after which Duncan dedicated to creating her personal repertoire and releasing albums in 2005 and 2012.

Ensemble for These Occasions (E4TT)

Ensemble for These Occasions’s third recording, As soon as/Reminiscence/Night time: Paul Celan, continues the group’s exploration of poetry and music by Holocaust artists, in honor of the centennial of seminal Twentieth-century poet Paul Celan (1920-1970), whose work speaks to his experiences of loss, disempowerment, and survival underneath a brutal regime. The recording options 4 premiere recordings: Die eichne Tü” (The oaken door, 2017), by E4TT composer and co-founder David Garner to texts by Paul Celan, together with “Espenbaum” (Aspen tree), the poet’s heartrending reflection on his survival and his mom’s loss of life; Nachtlang (Nightlong, 2017) by Jared Redmond,” additionally to poems by Celan; A Music on the Finish of the World (2018) by Stephen Eddins, to a textual content by Czeslaw Milosz; and 4 ½: A Piano Suite (2016)  by Libby Larsen.

Evie Ladin Band

The Evie Ladin Band’s banjo-centric, old-time sound is a versatile automobile for each Ladin’s well-honed originals and conventional Appalachian dance tunes, ballads, and songs, however Ladin together with bass participant Keith Terry and guitarist Erik Pearson are all versed in a world of music and rhythms, and their ears are all large open. It comes as no shock, then, that the supple ensemble determined to incorporate some materials from extra mainstream sources on its newest outing. Main off with Paul Simon’s “Slip Slidin’ Away,” they ramble by means of Des’ree’s “You gotta be dangerous, you gotta be daring, you gotta be wiser,” discover the Grateful Lifeless’s “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo,” interact in just a few critical mashups of conventional tunes and extra trendy strains, and find yourself with Janelle Monae’s bouncy “Tightrope.”

Invoice Fontana

In 1982, Invoice Fontana mounted a monumental out of doors sound set up known as Panorama Sculpture with Fog Horns that might near-impossible to comprehend in the present day. Reside audio feeds from eight foghorns across the San Francisco Bay have been routed to a central listening area on metropolis’s waterfront at Fort Mason. As a pioneer within the creating subject of Sound Artwork, Fontana’s fusion of sound and sculpture was nearly extraordinary, a lot much less on the region-encompassing scale that he was working with for Panorama Sculpture with Fog Horns. A doc of the set up was launched as an LP by San Francisco radio station KQED, which has since turn out to be a sought-after collectors’ merchandise.

Friction Quartet

A love letter to our fragile planet, Rising refers back to the growing water and temperatures that threaten to eat our human settlements and the wilderness round us. It’s also a rallying cry to mobilize our neighborhood towards this disaster. That is our planet to like, and our planet to lose. We hope that this album will present an atmosphere so that you can replicate on the facility and vulnerability of our planet Earth. Rising options three quartets commissioned by Friction Quartet from composers Alex Van Gils, Max Stoffregen, and Gabriella Smith. The gathering was recorded on the Lincoln Theater within the Napa Valley Performing Arts Middle in Yountville, California.

Galax Quartet With Karen R. Clark

The Galax Quartet (Elizabeth Blumenstock and David Wilson, Baroque violins; Roy Whelden, viola da gamba; and David Morris, Baroque cello) is equally at dwelling performing works by Seventeenth- and 18th-century composers in addition to innovative, newly commissioned works. Joined by visitor artist Karen R. Clark (contralto) the Galax Quartet takes us on a traversal of three vivid musical realms. Featured are two world premieres: Dream Material “Thoreau Songs” by Joseph Schwantner (Pulitzer Prize for Music, 1979), and Radif IV “Stars of Highest Magnitude” by Robert Morris. Additionally included is Marc Mellits’s well-liked String Quartet No. 2 “Revolution” in a brand new setting.

Teja Gerken and Doug Younger

San Francisco Bay Space fingerstyle guitarists Teja Gerken and Doug Young have carried out collectively for greater than a decade. Drawing from their particular person catalogs of authentic compositions, Celtic tunes, preparations of jazz requirements, and the occasional classical piece, Teja and Doug current a assorted repertoire. Usually utilizing a wide range of guitars that will embrace baritone, metal-bodied resonator, and 12-strings along with extra normal devices, the duo takes benefit of a large tonal palette.

Ben Goldberg

Ben Goldberg’s exceptional musical diary contains recent entry for almost on daily basis for the reason that shelter-in-place order was first imposed again in March. Goldberg describes the mission: “Like many musicians, when the coronavirus hit in March I misplaced all my work in a matter of days. I had a sophisticated schedule for March and April, crammed with excursions, festivals, and native live shows, and all of it evaporated very quick. Together with dropping all my paying work, I used to be left with the query, what in regards to the murals? One thing tells me artwork will likely be high quality, regardless that people are in hassle in the meanwhile. However proper now artwork is precluded from its vital work of gathering us collectively. So musicians are in a bizarre state of affairs. Within the preliminary shock my thought was, I do not know what to do however I can document music at dwelling. So on March 19, 2020, I started recording a brand new track on daily basis and posting them to this album. The philosophy is ‘use what you’ve obtained” (is there ever another choice?). For me which means clarinets, a synthesizer I can not determine, and rudimentary recording capacity. As a result of it is a diary I’m making an attempt to make use of the recording course of as a sketchbook, and a chance to fiddle.” (“Do not forget to fiddle.” — Steve Lacy)

The Good Life

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: That includes the all-star ensemble The Good Life led by Berkeley drummer Scott Amendola, the bristling band contains clarinetist Ben Goldberg, electrical bassist Trevor Dunn, and the powerhouse guitar tandem of Deerhoof’s John Dieterich and Wilco’s Nels Cline. Recorded stay on the lamented Oakland artwork area 21Grand and launched on Bandcamp as a fundraiser for Meals Financial institution for New York Metropolis (Foodbank4NYC), the group explores a vivid palette of densities and textures, with shut listening even at its most frisky. The mission began as a automobile for spelunking Ornette Coleman’s risky oeuvre, however grew to incorporate originals and the superb opening monitor, Jimmy Giuffre’s “Cry, Need” from his basic 1961 album Fusion. When you contribute $20, the piece is well worth the worth of admission itself.

Matthew Charles Heulitt

Matthew Charles Heulitt is an expert freelance studio guitarist and full-time music instructor. He’s been within the Bay Space for 23 years touring, performing stay, and doing clinics. For the reason that pandemic, he has moved to producing music at dwelling. That is his first launch. Heulitt performs guitars and bass, with Frank Briggs on drums.

Matthew Charles Heulitt

Matthew Charles Heulitt describe the music on this digital-only launch: This track is written to honor the native peoples of the Mount Shasta and southern Oregon space the place I’ve spent a lot time. There’s little or no written or identified in regards to the peoples who known as that spectacular terrain dwelling for 1000’s of years. It’s a profoundly transferring and exquisite place. As a part of the genocide of native peoples by the American authorities, the Ka’hosadi have been systematically and brutally murdered by American militia and gold seekers. No apology or reparations have been provided to the surviving households by the American authorities. There was no acknowledgement of the genocide. Heulitt performed the guitars, Terry Branam performed drums and percussion, and Dan Feiszli performed bass.

Ian Carey Quintet +1

Trumpeter/composer Ian Carey has lengthy aimed to mix the swing and virtuosity of jazz with the dense compositional textures of chamber music. After receiving a grant from Chamber Music America to compose a brand new suite, he selected “nervousness” as his topic — a longtime affliction of his, and completely prescient given the occasions of the final a number of years. (The suite was premiered at SFJAZZ in 2018.) On the brand new CD, Carey’s fifth as a pacesetter, the Richmond resident is heard along with his Quintet+1 (Adam Shulman, piano; Sheldon Brown, bass clarinet; Kasey Knudsen, alto sax; Fred Randolph, bass; Jon Arkin, drums; and Carey on trumpet).

iSing Silicon Valley

Right here I Stand is the debut album of the award-winning women’ choir, iSing Silicon Valley. It celebrates iSing’s give attention to the facility of women to alter the world as they increase their voices in remembrance, power, and the pure, shared delight of coming collectively to sing. The album opens with the treble-voice model of Ēriks Ešenvalds’s work for solo voice and refrain, Solely in Sleep. It additionally contains works commissioned by iSing throughout its first six seasons, with themes starting from social justice to particular person progress and collective energy: By no means Shall I Neglect, Adam Schoenberg’s musical setting of excerpts from Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Night time; Daniel Elder’s preparations of his commentary on gun violence, 365, and of In Your Mild, his musical setting of one in all Rumi’s poems.

Alam Khan

On his new album Solace, Alam Khan presents three spacious improvisations on the sarod. Recorded stay on the Ali Akbar Faculty Of Music, these alaps slowly unfurl to disclose the actions and traits of the ragas, and the highly effective magnificence inside. Coming at a time of turmoil for a lot of throughout the globe, Solace is a chance for listeners to embrace a second of peace and stillness. North Indian classical music is exclusive for its capacity to conjure highly effective nuanced emotional experiences, and to permit listeners to entry deeply tranquil meditative states by which time appears to face nonetheless.

Aki Kumar

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV Review: Mumbai-born, South Bay blues vocalist and harp ace Aki Kumar simply launched a seven-song album Dilruba (Sony) with a collection of usually playful movies. The piece beneath, which was shot within the Utah desert to attenuate social contact, is his bluesification of “Aana Mere Pyar Ko,” a Nineteen Nineties Bollywood hit. Like with Sons of the Soul Revivers, Kumar’s profession took off by means of his Little Village Basis releases, notably his mind-bending 2016 breakthrough Aki Goes to Bollywood, which remodeled Hindi movie themes by setting them to an array of African-American grooves. Whereas Sony is advertising Dilruba as Indian pop, it’s really a rootsy set impressed by Kumar’s love of early rock ’n’ roll.

Yuri Liberzon

Classical-guitar virtuoso Yuri Liberzon tackles the difficult Manuel Barrueco transcriptions of the Bach Violin Sonatas. The Six-String Journal wrote about this launch in September, “Yuri meets each one of many calls for with magnificence and finesse, two elements I like in his taking part in. From the opening lushness of the primary monitor, the adagio from the G Minor Sonata, Yuri units the stage for your entire recording by slowly and calculatedly pulling the listener right into a world wealthy with introspection and wonder. The strengths of this launch are many however what maybe stands out as a theme is how grounded Yuri’s taking part in is whereas transferring you with a delicate ahead momentum.” 

Lisa Mezzacappa Six

A collection of authentic music for electro-acoustic sextet, impressed by Italo Calvino’s tales in regards to the origins of the universe. Mezzacappa describes the inspiration for music: “This set of music is what occurred once I let Italo Calvino and his Cosmicomics tales totally inhabit my thoughts for a 12 months. I discovered his fictional universe an excellent place to hang around in as a composer—it’s an area of boundless creativeness, infinite generative chance, fierce mental curiosity, and simply the correct amount of irreverence and weirdness to rescue it from being cute. He jogs my memory again and again of the surprise and playfulness of the artistic act, and I attempted to switch a number of the intoxicating vitality of his prose to my music, and to how the musicians within the band work together.”

The Lorca Hart Trio that includes Ralph Moore

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: San Francisco drummer Lorca Hart groups up with three confederates from his years on the Los Angeles scene on his lengthy awaited second album, a top-notch, post-bop session that swings with fierce conviction. Enjoying with all of the style and energy that Bay Space audiences have come to count on, Hart principally cedes the foreground to his exemplary bandmates, the extremely sought-after pianist Josh Nelson and big-toned bassist Edwin Livingston. However the session’s star is the resurgent tenor saxophonist Ralph Moore, a superb improviser and main voice who appeared to drop off the scene after his lengthy tenure within the Tonight Present Band. The group performs with unfussy confidence on a robust program that features originals by all three Angelenos, a luxurious ballad (“Right here’s That Wet Day”), a difficult Monk tune (“Bye-Ya”) and a post-bop anthem (Joe Henderson’s “Mo’ Joe”).

Jacam Manricks

Australian-born composer, arranger, and multi-reed participant Jacam Manricks relocated to Sacramento in 2014 after greater than a decade in NYC, the place he labored with main artists like Tyshawn Sorey, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Ben Monder, Gary Versace, and Matt Wilson. He additionally earned a doctorate in JazzArts from Manhattan College of Music in ’07, a program that allowed him to pursue his love of classical music and cutting-edge jazz. The brand new album, his seventh, was recorded at his dwelling studio, with Sacramento pianist Joe Gilman and NYC compatriots Clarence Penn, drums, and Matt Penman, bass. Manricks produced, engineered, and combined the mission, which options his authentic compositions, preparations, and, on a number of tracks, string and woodwind orchestrations.

David Okay. Mathews

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: A scarce presence on the Bay Space scene since taking on the keyboard chair in Santana, Pinole’s David Okay. Mathews is a veteran jazz, blues, and funk participant who has thrived creatively as an accompanist. On this mission he turns the highlight on a number of the area’s biggest vocalists, showcasing soul-steeped masters Woman Bianca on Van McCoy’s “Giving Up,” Kenny Washington on Lennon and McCartney’s “Yesterday,” Tony Lindsay on Donny Hathaway’s “You Needed to Know,” and Amikaeyla on Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman, the Isley Brothers’ “For the Love of You,” and Stevie Marvel’s “Superwoman.” Mathews focuses on undersung masters, however Rock ’n’ Roll Corridor-of-Famer Steve Miller additionally cuts free on Ray Charles’s “One Mint Julip.”

Norma and Richard Mayer

Norma and Richard Mayer play a fiery model of chamber music not usually related to their uncommon musical mix — music for unaccompanied voice and flute. Their operatic preparations have been acclaimed as a groundbreaking course in trendy music. The compositions on this album are a number of items by Black composers resembling Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Will Marion Prepare dinner, Nathaniel Dett, Florence B. Value, William Grant Nonetheless, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and lots of extra from the Mayer’s repertoire of greater than 700 numbers for voice and flute. Norma and Richard have carried out to nice acclaim from Russia to Germany to France to California, with factors in between, with an enormous repertoire encompassing early music, classical music, African-American spirituals, present tunes, and jazz.

Lisa Mezzacappa

That is the debut episode of a brand new digital opera, launched as a serial podcast, and created by composer Lisa Mezzacappa and librettist Beth Lisick. They describe the opera’s setup: It’s the early Nineteen Eighties, and folks throughout the US are connecting on-line for the primary time. Web service suppliers are organising bulletin boards and chatrooms (additionally known as boards, or “bands” after CB radio) for his or her prospects, permitting folks to debate hobbies, politics, work, life and love with like-minded folks they may by no means have met in any other case. Margot will get employed to be the neighborhood supervisor at a brand new on-line neighborhood. As ladies within the chatrooms discover themselves talked over and preyed upon by males, Joan comes out of her shell and requests a discussion board for ladies solely. She and Margot emerge because the leaders of a close-knit group of computer-savvy ladies, and bond over their newfound sense of objective and chance.

The Miniwatt String Trio

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: That includes violinist John Ettinger and the potent guitar tandem of John Finkbeiner and Myles Boisen, the East Bay’s Miniwatt String Trio provides a dose of twang to its stripped down tackle the new membership sound. Specializing in requirements from the Twenties and ’30s (like a jaunty tackle Johnny Inexperienced’s “Out of Nowhere”) the trio may flip the Thelonious Monk gem “Hackensack” into good fare for a Parisian café. Vocalist Jill Rogers, Boisen’s bandmate within the alt-country outfit Crying Time, contributes on two tracks, bringing the sass on “Frim Fram Sauce,” and the requisite rue on “Foolin’ Myself,” a track indelibly linked to Billie Vacation.

Amy X Neuburg

Based on Amy X Neuberg, this launch is a “mini-magnum opus Entitled affords a breathless onslaught of recent entitlements — from Thai meals supply to NSA spying to making ready for loss of life — all organized in an ever-evolving dactylic hexameter refrain of 140 vocal tracks. The piece was designed initially for the 140-speaker Dice theater at Virginia Tech College.”

D. Riley Nicholson

The music Resurrection of On a regular basis Folks was initially commissioned in 2019 by David Herrera Efficiency Firm (DHPC) for a full-length dance work created to honor the human expertise of devastating loss; it premiered at Z-Area in San Francisco. The collaboration explored the flexibility of loss to impress empathy, power, and resilience. This piece is an digital work, utilizing samples of stay devices together with ready pipe organ, piano, invented devices, and located sounds. Nicholson launched the music from this mission as an album in 2020 with an album launch get together at Middle for New Music on January nineteenth.

Isaac Pastor-Chermak and Alison Lee

Bay Space musical energy couple Isaac Pastor-Chermak, cello, and Alison Lee, piano, group up for his or her debut album, with sonatas and showpieces by Beethoven (Op.5 No.2), Gershwin (Three Preludes), Schumann (“Fantasy Items,” Op.73), and Debussy (Cello Sonata).

Peninsula Girls’s Refrain

The Peninsula Girls’s Refrain is proud to announce the discharge in December 2020 of its ninth CD, Girls Making Waves, in celebration of the centenary of the nineteenth Modification. Our glowing new recording options the three very particular items that have been commissioned by the PWC for our Trailblazers Mission, honoring the achievements of three American ladies pioneers: abolitionist Harriet Tubman, transgender rights activits Miss Main Griffin-Gracy, and ladies’s suffrage chief Alice Paul. Together with Bay Space composer Eric Tuan’s good, haunting displacement, the inspiring phrases of Susan B. Anthony in “Rise Up,” by Jake Runestad, Jocelyn Hagen’s thrilling “Moon Goddess,” and extra, this can be a highly effective, lovely assortment that celebrates ladies — making waves! 

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale

George Frideric Handel lavished explicit consideration on the contralto or mezzo-soprano roles in his operas and oratorios all through the years. What higher approach to have fun the plush arias that Handel composed for his contralto stars than with Avery Amereau, described by The New York Occasions as “a unprecedented American alto on the rise,” alongside Handelian scholar Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. That includes virtuosic, passionate, stirring arias all through Handel’s composing profession from his early Aci, Galatea e Polifemo (1708) to his later Alcina (1735) this recording brings to life the unimaginable music as soon as sung by Nicolini, Senesino, and Carestini. This debut album by Amereau marks the final recording of Nicholas McGegan on the helm of PBO.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale

Younger David has simply slain Goliath, incomes him the rapturous admiration of the Israelites and the murderous envy of King Saul. This Biblical story of affection and jealousy, insanity and mourning, household feuds and supernatural apparitions impressed one in all Handel’s most ingenious and well-liked oratorios. Famend Handel skilled Nic McGegan leads an all-star solid by means of the total dramatic vary from tender lyricism to full-throttle triumph and glory. Read our review.

Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale

Since 2015, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning composer Caroline Shaw have developed a robust inventive relationship. Alongside Shaw’s first fee for the group, a track known as “Crimson, Crimson Rose” composed for the Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, PBO established its New Music for Outdated Devices initiative, an effort to fee and carry out new works written expressly for interval devices. Subsequently, Shaw wrote two extra songs for PBO and von Otter (“And So” and “The Edge”), and in 2019 composed a large-scale oratorio for the Orchestra, Chorale, and soloists Avery Amereau and Dashon Burton titled The Listeners. This CD encompasses PBO’s blossoming relationship with Caroline Shaw, that includes the total assortment of PBO/Shaw commissions up to now.

David Rapoport

David Rapoport describes the genesis of Andromeda: “In February of 2020, my cat of 17 years, Andromeda, was identified with lung most cancers. In March, on the day that Shelter in Place was introduced, I needed to euthanize her. After her loss of life, I made a decision to compose a piece that might each be a tribute to her reminiscence in addition to a automobile to assist me course of going by means of an indeterminate interval of isolation with out an vital companion. The work is in a easy, modified track kind. I selected to jot down for such a big ensemble, somewhat than a chamber ensemble of some selection, due to the psychological launch from a interval of isolation that I may domesticate by pondering by way of the landscapes that an orchestra can create.”

Crimson Cedar Chamber Music

Crimson Cedar Chamber Music brings Bach’s three Sonatas for Viola da Gamba to life in a brand new association for 3 gamers. With violin and cello taking part in every respective hand of the harpsichord half, this album takes Bach’s black and white masterpiece and explodes it into orchestrated technicolor. Crimson Cedar’s core ensemble — violinist Miera Kim and cellist Carey Bostian — is joined by Bay Space visitor artist Isaac Pastor-Chermak for this new CD launch.  

Lease Romus/Heikki Koskinen Life’s Blood Ensemble

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: The newest dispatch from the Life’s Blood Ensemble’s mytho-improvisational realm is one other singular musical journey combining the hurly-burly of open-form jazz with folkloric devices, themes, and rhythmic cycles. Impressed by Finnish mythology and the epic tales of different northern peoples, Finnish-American Lease Romus (alto and soprano saxophones, flute, and Finnish kantele — plucked psaltry) and Finnish-born grasp Heikki “Mike” Koskinen (e-trumpet, tenor recorder, and kantele) create strikingly vivid, deeply textured music that evokes stark landscapes and heroic deeds. The sprawling ensemble options 11 extremely regarded Bay Space musicians who play with eager consciousness of one another, notably the dynamic-minded rhythm part of drummer Tim Orr, vibraphonist Mark Clifford, and bassists Safa Shokrai and Max Judelson. With the nice nature-music explorer Cheryl E. Leonard working her sonic magic on varied beachcomber objects and Japanese bowl gongs, the music appears to emerge proper out of the Finnish soil.

Mark Rosenthal and Mates

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: With contributions by Peter Apfelbaum, Steve Hogan, and Jeff Cressman, there’s a great deal of personnel overlap between Alma Issues and the brand new album by metal drum participant Mark Rosenthal, a musician I wasn’t conversant in earlier than he dropped me a hyperlink to his new album Diggin’ In. Add in gamers like percussionist Ami Molinelli, guitarist John Schott, and saxophonist Larry de la Cruz, and Stephen Kent on didgeridoo and the surfeit of expertise is obvious. Rosenthal unleashes his collaborators on a various and pleasant puckish program that ranges from Pharoah Sanders’s celestial jazz hit “The Creator Has A Grasp Plan” (that includes vocals by Michelle Jacques) and Bob Marley’s “No Hassle” to John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery” and Billy Cobham’s fusion landmark “Crimson Baron.” He additionally ideas his hat to his formative Caribbean influences with a swish model of “Rainorama” by the Trinidadian calypsonian Lord Kitchener.

San Francisco Symphony

In celebration of Michael Tilson Thomas’ twenty fifth and closing 12 months as Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, SFS Media presents the premiere recordings of MTT’s first and most up-to-date compositions for voice and orchestra. MTT’s From the Diary of Anne Frank options narrator Isabel Leonard, whereas Meditations on Rilke is dropped at life by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny. Impressed by and based mostly on the phrases and compassionate spirit of Anne Frank, From the Diary of Anne Frank opens with a flourish and culminates in a solemn but hopeful imaginative and prescient for the long run. Meditations on Rilke takes listeners on an emotional and evocative journey befitting the lyrical sweep of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poems.

San Francisco Symphony

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony add to their Grammy-winning discography the soulful recording of American composer Aaron Copland’s closing and monumental Symphony No. 3. “Like a magician pulling away the curtain for a giant reveal,” (San Francisco Chronicle), Michael Tilson Thomas and the SF Symphony supply a efficiency that captures “a strong diploma of ardor, readability, and expressive integrity.”

Lara Sarkissian

Lara Sarkissian is a sound artist, digital composer, radio DJ and filmmaker born and based mostly in San Francisco, California. Sarkissian’s digital music weaves experimental approaches, sound collage methods together with Armenian instrumentation and sampling. Based on her, “I used to be inquisitive about taking components from Armenian sounds and classical however creating one thing new that isn’t essentially nostalgic or trying again, however extra so imagining it in present instances and future. It’s form of a mirrored image of the lived experiences and place I’m in, and the communities I’m part of in San Francisco and Oakland.

“I’ve loved listening to Armenian classical compositions by means of my mom, and one in all my favourite albums she launched me to is Karine Hovhannisyan’s “Classical Music for the Armenian Kanun” that includes the Armenian State Opera Orchestra. I fell in love with “Adagio” on this album, and the way the abrupt after which vanishing kanun brings rigidity, and form of suspends you in time. I imagined chopping up elements of the orchestra and kanun, and sampling that rigidity inside bass and modular synth components, some suspenseful mild percussion, to emphasise that feeling much more. I additionally put elements of the kanun in a guitar amp and pedal plug in for a distorted and classic sound.”

Lara Sarkissian

Sarkissian describes this recording: “I produced a part of this track throughout my artist residency at Les Dominicains de Haute Alsace in France, making a multichannel soundscape. I used my very own subject recordings from Geghard Monastery’s choir singing Armenian Chants (Sharakan). Due to the multichannel format, I meant to create a trans-sensorial and immersive atmosphere with the track.” 

Maria Schneider

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: Her love of pure splendor suffuses her ninth launch, the two-disc album Data Lords, however this bold, bifurcated mission takes her 18-piece band into territory the place she hasn’t trod earlier than. Half cautionary story and half rapturous celebration, her message is as blunt and direct as her voicings are shaded and delicate. The primary disc, “The Digital World,” explores the harm carried out by the technological colossi who’re shaping the modern order (a difficulty that Schneider has usually addressed off the bandstand too, writing essays and articles and testifying earlier than Congress). … I discovered the second, “Our Pure World,” extra numerous and satisfying, as nobody else in jazz builds lapidary passages with Schneider’s persistence and a focus to element. 

Scroggins & Rose

In a world of rising disconnection, grasp instrumentalists Tristan Scroggins and Alisa Rose present a touchstone for experiencing the world within the second. Regardless of their youth, Scroggins & Rose carry an skilled contact to the worlds of each Western classical and American conventional music that explores the dynamic and emotional capabilities of a string duet. They’re a part of a brand new musical motion that seeks to bridge the hole each culturally and musically between classical and folks music. Scroggins, a mandolinst and second-generation bluegrass virtuoso, and Rose, a Grammy-nominated composer and violinist/fiddler, create an inviting musical environment with their considerate preparations and harmonies. From right here the listener is taken on a journey away from the acquainted because the duo make the most of dangerous improvisation and modern musical methods to reimagine each the boundaries of acoustic music and the boundaries of each bluegrass and classical genres. Learn our Artist Spotlight with Alisa Rose.

Edward Simon

In 2020, Edward Simon celebrates his illustrious three-decade profession in music. Throughout this timespan, the Venezuela-born pianist and composer has led or co-led award-winning ensembles and collaborated with a few of in the present day’s most outstanding jazz artists, together with vocalists Luciana Souza and Gretchen Parlato; Afinidad, the long-running virtuoso quartet that includes David Binney, Scott Colley, and Brian Blade; the acclaimed chamber ensemble Imani Winds; and the all-star SFJAZZ Collective. 25 Years presents Simon’s bespoke overview of his multilayered, modern work as a pianist and composer. In brief, it’s a distinctive approach to expertise and luxuriate in Simon’s music — a must have for his followers and the right introduction for these not but conversant in his elegant taking part in and distinctive compositional sensibility.

The Sons of the Soul Revivers

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: For sheer soul-powered inspiration, it’s onerous to beat Songs We’ll Always Sing: A Tribute to the Pilgrim Jubilees by the Vallejo gospel group The Sons of the Soul Revivers. The old-school Soul Revivers are a household band that discovered a brand new viewers with the 2017 launch of Reside! Rancho Nicasio on blues keyboardist Jim Pugh’s nonprofit Little Village Basis label. Produced by Pugh and San José guitarist Child Andersen in his invaluable Greaseland Studios, Songs We’ll All the time Sing affords one other object lesson within the enduring energy of the basic gospel quartet sound.

It’s not onerous to see why Soul Revivers brothers, James, Dwayne, and Walter Morgan, Jr. are drawn to the Pilgrim Jubilees, a golden age gospel ensemble that’s been round since 1934 and nonetheless contains members of cofounder Elgie Graham’s household. The album contains most of the Pilgrim Jubilees’ best-known songs, however you don’t have to be a gospel music aficionado to revel within the Soul Revivers raucous rhythms and ardent harmonizing.

Sunken Cathedral (Ryan Jobes)

These compositions characterize composer Ryan Jobes’s newest try to supply the listener a momentary escape from the uncertainty of the present establishment and supply an excuse to flee into their headphones, stare on the ceiling and drift away from the temporal world — if even for a second. By highlighting delicate timbral modifications within the materials, Jobes seeks to information shifts in notion between consciousness and a dream-like state.

Josh Thurston-Milgrom

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: There’s a unique form of glory within the music of Oakland bassist Josh Thurston-Milgrom, a well-traveled participant who’s been a presence on the Bay Space jazz scene for years. I’ve seen him in a wide range of settings, notably on the Stanford Jazz Pageant (the place he’s a longtime school member on the Workshop). However I used to be shocked and delighted to search out out he’s additionally a composer with a present for luxurious lyricism. His debut album Thirsty Pilgrim Songs (Gradual & Regular Data) is filled with drama, incident, and counterpoint, beginning with the gospel-tinged opening monitor “Le Petite Mort.”

The stellar solid options gamers he related with by means of the Stanford Jazz Workshop, together with tenor sax star Dayna Stephens and trumpeter Mike Olmos (the chief of Membership Deluxe’s long-running Monday Night time Jam session the place Thurston-Milgrom was in the home band). He’s joined within the rhythm part by pianist Malcolm Campbell, an in depth accomplice, and New York drummer Allison Miller, chief of the award-winning band Growth Tic Growth. Keyboardist Adam Shulman, percussionist Josh Jones, guitarist Robert Kirby, and multi-wind participant Steven Lugerner (on bass clarinet) additionally contribute on a number of tracks. 

Mahsa Vahdat

Mahsa Vahdat is a famend singer of classical Persian music. In his profile of Vahdat, Andrew Gilbert described her newest launch: Her new album, Enlighten the Night, which was launched in North America by San Francisco’s Six Levels Data, displays her new life in Berkeley. Like a lot of her earlier initiatives it’s a seamless material weaving collectively her compositions based mostly on classical Persian modes and flowing jazz harmonies created by the Norwegian trio of pianist Tord Gustavsen, bassist Gjermund Silset, and drummer Kenneth Ekornes. For lyrics, she returns to the beloved Persian verse of Rumi, Hafez, Saadi of Shiraz, and Omar Khayyam, whereas additionally drawing on important Twentieth-century writers like Forough Farrokhzad, Nimā Yushij, and the nice poet/painter Mohammad Ebrahim Jafari. The album opens with Jafari’s “The Act of Freedom,” a poem in regards to the energy of elevating one’s voice

Kenny Wollesen and Ben Goldberg

That is the primary duo collaboration in 27 years between critically acclaimed composer/clarinet participant Ben Goldberg and prolific drummer Kenny Wollesen (Tom Waits, Sean Lennon, Ron Sexsmith, Invoice Frisell, Norah Jones, John Lurie, Myra Melford, Steven Bernstein, and John Zorn. He’s a founding member of the New Klezmer Trio and a member of the Intercourse Mob and Himalayas teams.) Clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg has formed a profession by means of curiosity and experimentation throughout genres and types. The New York Occasions has famous that Goldberg’s music “conveys a sense of joyous analysis into the fundamentals of polyphony and collective improvising, the fixed usefulness of musicians intuitively coming collectively and pulling aside.” Based on the Bandcamp web page for this new launch, “Kenny mentioned ‘somebody must make a document known as Music for an Avant-Garde Therapeutic massage Parlour. So we did.”

Denny Zeitlin

From Andrew Gilbert’s SFCV review: There’s no shock in regards to the constant brilliance of pianist Denny Zeitlin’s new album Live at Mezzrow (Sunnyside). Recorded on the New York piano bar over a two-night run final 12 months when he was 81, the session extends Zeitlin’s late-career artistic surge into his ninth decade. When he’s not giving fascinating, usually thematic solo recitals or creating electro-acoustic soundscapes with percussionist George Marsh, a trio with bass grasp Buster Williams and drum star Matt Wilson has been his main automobile over the previous twenty years. Given the hectic schedules of his collaborators, Zeitlin doesn’t get the group collectively usually, however when he does, they make it rely.