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SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“RETURN TO RETURN TO SORRENTO”

Saturday February 20th, 2010 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
$15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students

Tickets are available through the Old First Concerts Box Office at (415) 474-1608, online at http://oldfirstconcerts.org and at the door. For more information, please call Old First Concerts box office.

SAN FRANCISCO, January 22, 2010 — Ever have a tune you couldn’t get out of your head? The composers of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra find themselves returning to Ernesto de Curtis’s Return to Sorrento (1902) in Return to Return to Sorrento — on Saturday, February 20, at Old First Church — evoking a sunny, post-El-Nino world of musical fact and fantasy from John Bilotta, Philip Freihofner, David Graves, Loren Jones, Phil Lockwood, Lisa Scola Prosek, Kit Ruscoe, Martha Stoddard, Davide Verotta, Erling Wold, and Mark Alburger.

The Return pieces — a series of variations by Jones, Scola Prosek, Ruscoe, Verotta, Wold, and Alburger — will be interwoven into a mix that will also feature Bilotta’s back-to-the-future Quantum Mechanic (semi-staged in co-operation with Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera); David Graves’s relatedly-apocalyptic Tickertape; Philip Freihofner and Phil Lockwood’s evocative Blade of Grass; Martha Stoddard’s enchanting Duo Concertante for Flute, Marimba, and Chamber Orchestra (featuring Bruce Salvisberg and Anne Szalba); Jones’s adventurous Lost Plateau; and Alburger’s frenetic-erotic-violent Salome Suite.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

WHO: San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra
WHAT: New Music premieres for orchestra by Bay Area composers
WHERE: Old First Church 1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
WHEN: 8pm Saturday February 20th, 2010
TICKETS: $15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Saturday June 12, 2010 at Old First Church

“HAUNTED HOUSE SCIENCE FICTION QUIZ SHOW”

Saturday November 7th, 2009 at 8 pm
Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Ave, Oakland, CA 94611
$15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students

OAKLAND AND WORLD PREMIERES

SAN FRANCISCO, October 7, 2009 –  Be afraid.  Be very afraid, when San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra presents Haunted House Science Fiction Quiz Show, an evening of electro-acoustic fantasy, nightmares, and whimsy.  In its premiere performance in Oakland (a short atomic-powered broomstick ride across the Bay) on Saturday, November 7 — emcee Music Director Mark Alburger, Associate Conductor Martha Stoddard, and compositional contestants Michael Cooke, Philip Freihofner, Loren Jones, Lisa Scola Prosek, Gerhard Samuel, Davide Verotta, and Erling Wold will conjure up works sounding particularly haunting and resonant in the Julia-Morgan-designed crematory / columbarium / mausoleum Chapel of the Chimes (4499 Piedmont Avenue).

The séance begins with Freihofner‘s Electroacoustic Music for Oboe, which provides the passage into The Secret Door, where Jones will invoke a fantasy alternative-universe San Francisco for piano four-hands.

Cooke calls forth another spirit world “…with the Spirit of the Desert,” an evocative work for violin, bassoon, and piano — inspired by Big Bend National Park in West Texas, and conjuring up in the movements the ghosts of Paul Hindemith, Igor Stravinsky, and Native American music.  Across the great divide, poet Michael McDonough reanimates the genius of Samuel (1924-2008), who set McDonough’s spare minimalist “3″, as night and trees (for clarinet, soprano, and bongos), before departing himself into that good night.

Dreams and reality collide again in Scola Prosek‘s Roma, hallucinated (on Tylenol PM) at 20,000 feet in a high-tech jet of engine roars, footsteps, lyricism (graced by sopranos Maria Mikheyenko and the composer), and the chariots of the entire orchestra and Rome’s fiery Vittorio Emanuele Monument.  Staying in the surrealist, subalpine, soprani sequence — Verotta‘s Verrà la Morte e Avrà i Tuoi Occhi (Death Will Come and Have Your Eyes) reminds us that there is nothing wrong with your ears, but that, for the evening, we are in control.

Meanwhile, Wold notes in Sweet Encumbrance that bondage-and-discipline can be fun, particularly when the ball-and-chain is the beloved other, in one of his trademark post-minimalist lovelies; while Alburger takes the theme literally for Elijah Ghost, in seven movements drawn from his opera-oratorio Elijah Rock, a twisted techno-take on the scientific fantasies of the Biblical Books of First and Second Kings.

But yet, as it turns out, fear ye not: this is not a test.  This is the Haunted House Science Fiction Quiz Show.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

WHO: San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra
WHAT: New Music premieres for orchestra by Bay Area composers
WHERE: Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave, Oakland, CA 94611
WHEN: 8pm Saturday November 7th, 2009
TICKETS: $15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“FREE FOR ALL, (but for you $15)”

Saturday February 28th, 2009 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
$15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students

Tickets are available through the Old First Concerts Box Office at (415) 474-1608, online at http://oldfirstconcerts.org and at the door. For more information, please call Old First Concerts box office.

SAN FRANCISCO, February 2, 2009 – If you are looking for an invigorating new musical experience ranging from new through-composed gems to electronic music and free improv with graphical scores; have we got a deal for you! SFCCO, the only orchestral ensemble comprised of compsers, has the largest selection of new and pre-owned new-music premieres.

There is great value! in new music by: John Beeman, Michael Cooke, Philip Freihofner, Gary Friedman, David Graves, Loren Jones, Lisa Scola Prosek, David Sprung, Clare Twohy, Davide Verotta, Erling Wold, and Mark Alburger.

      Michael Cooke considers quantum mechanics and general relativity in “String Theory” utilizing graphical notation and free improvisation for the entire ensemble. Philip Freihofner‘s “What Are You Going to Dream Tonight” presents technology-driven free writing for oboe, clarinet, electric keyboard, and viola. From the dreamy to the hallucinogenic with Davide Verotta’s “Yanitl”. David Graves and Clare Twohy team up for a fire sale in the collaborative “Fireproof Winds” Lisa Scola Prosek’s “Serenade for Trumpet” is based on a melody by her son Eduard Prosek (who is also the soloist) and the drive-in movie side of film noir. Loren Jones’ “February’s Children” expands the ensemble with electric guitar and bass, harp, synthesizer, and percussion. David Sprung’s “Serendipities” is an ambitious piece for large ensemble. Special deals for you thrill seakers with Erling Wold‘s bawdy “Two Orchestral Waltzes for Lynne” and Mark Alburger‘s deliciously inappropriate “Sex and the Orchestra”. If more traditional means are your thing, consider “Wind Sextet” by Gary Friedman and “Adago and Dance” by John Beeman.

It’s a beautiful program folks and a real Free-for-all (but for you, $15)!

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

WHO: San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra
WHAT: New Music premieres for orchestra by Bay Area composers
WHERE: Old First Church 1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 9410
WHEN: 8pm Saturday February 28, 2009
TICKETS: $15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Saturday June 13, 2009 at Old First Church

Program:  

Gary Friedman…………………..Meanderings and On the Go
Loren Jones……………………..Wabli Mato Wiya and Two Islands
Sheli Nan…………………………Signatures in Time and Place
Lisa Scola Prosek………………How They Move from Badessa
Martha Stoddard…………………In Search of Planet X
Clare Twohy……………………..Untitled
Davide Verotta ………………….Sinfonia

      Gary Friedman’s Meanderings and On the Go, two octets for winds, will feature transformations of traditional materials over time and space. The music of Clare Twohy will show new take on the halls of academia respectively. Martha Stoddard’s In Search of Planet X will blast off fireworks of atonality inspired by minimalism and the works of Gustav Holst; while Sheli Nan’s Signatures in Time and Place reflects back to the sounds of Medieval France and Ancient Greece. From here, Lisa Scola Prosek will invoke ideas from Renaissance Italy in How They Move, from her opera-in-progress after Boccaccio’s Decameron, entitled Badessa, with two intriguing movements conjuring up “Little fast ones” and “Big fat ones.” Loren Jones will contribute two pieces based on the music of Indonesia: Wabli Mato Wiya “Eagle Bear Woman flies across the land.” and Two Islands. Davide Verotta’s non-programmatic (though similarly Italianate and serendipitously pictorial) Sinfonia, Per Orchestra da Camera will as the pressing question, “If one insists in asking what [the music] tries to express, well, the journey is from a place of relative stasis, to the interplay of the slightly whimsical and energy bursts (escape? emergence?), back to a place of stasis.” Find your own answers at SFCCO’s concert “Moving Targets” under the baton of Assistant Conductor Martha Stoddard on Saturday November 8, 2008.

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

WHO: San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra
WHAT: New Music premieres for orchestra by Bay Area composers
WHERE: Old First Church 1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
WHEN: 8pm Saturday November 8, 2008
TICKETS: $15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: February 28th, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“MARCH MADNESS”

Saturday March 8, 2008 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
$15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students

Tickets are available through the Old First Concerts Box Office at (415) 474-1608, online at http://oldfirstconcerts.org and at the door. For more information, please call Old First Concerts box office.

SAN FRANCISCO, February 8, 2008 — Lunacy. Spaciness. Taking 20 years to write a piece. Thinking that music will save the planet. Having a face in the back of one’s head. Suicidal thoughts. Why do we do what we do? Because we can’t do otherwise? One thing’s for sure: it’s a crazy world. So come celebrate the craziness with Alexis Alrich, Michael Cooke, Philip Freihofner, Dan Reiter, Martha Stoddard, Erling Wold, and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra as they present “March Madness”!

Michael Cooke’s Sun & Moon is a dizzying take on time and place, with members of the orchestra performing spacilly and spatially at the point-and-click discretion of Music Director Mark Alburger. Martha Stoddard, as Guest Conductor, will take the ensemble even farther out in A Little Trip to Outer Space where reality has lost its bearings. The entire orchestra will evaporate in the clangor of metal as Philip Freihofner re-invents sanity in The Bell Field, while Dan Reiter’s Toccata and Fugue will send minds reeling under the direction of Associate Conductor John Kendall Bailey toward a reckoning with Johann Sebastian Bach. Farthest afield on earth will be Alexis Alrich’s Fragile Forests: II Cambodia, where East and West consciousnesses collide in the loveliest possible manner. And, as a final coup-de-grace Erling Wold will evoke the diabolical in Mordake Suite No. 2, in hint of his mad opera to be premiered later in the year.

Program:

Alexis Alrich…………………..Fragile Forests: II Cambodia

Michael Cooke………………..Sun & Moon

Philip Freihofner………………The Bell Field

Dan Reiter…………………….Toccata and Fugue

Martha Stoddard……………..A Little Trip to Outer Space

Erling Wold…………………….Mordake Suite No. 2

CALENDAR EDITORS PLEASE NOTE:

WHO: San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra
WHAT: New Music premieres for orchestra by Bay Area composers
WHERE: Old First Church 1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
WHEN: 8pm Saturday March 8, 2008
TICKETS: $15 General, $12 Seniors (65 and older), $12 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Friday June 7, 2008 at Old First Church