SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“THE DARK SERENADE”

Saturday October 15th, 2011 at 8 pm Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
and
Sunday October 16th, 2011 at 8 pm Chapel of the Chimes
4499 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, CA

$17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 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 and at the door for Chapel of the Chimes

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 15, 2011 —- The days are growing shorter, the economy is not improving, and it’s time for The Dark Serenade. Join the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, on either side of the Bay — at 8pm, October 15 (Old First Church, San Francisco) or 16 (Chapel of the Chimes) — in a haunted landscape of works by Philip Freihofner, David Graves, Loren Jones, Lisa Scola Prosek, Davide Verotta and Mark Alburger.

Freihofner sets the mood in Carmilla, a beautiful post-minimalist setting of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story of vampires and women, featuring Lisa Scola Prosek.    This talented soprano-composer will then showcase her own luminous Night at the Kremlin excerpt entitled The Goldfish Pond, where world-renowned tenor John Duykers will hold forth as Winston Churchill on Stalinesque situations.

Keeping to matters historically ominous, Verotta’s Facing Chaos illuminates a passage from Seneca the Younger’s Thyestes (“Trembling are our hearts, lest all things fall shattered in fatal ruin . . .”) in a juxtaposition of aggressive Indian talas with plangent basal melodies.  Such contrasts are perhaps even more extreme in the grave Graves Amaranthine Silence, where animated contrapuntal complexities are counterpoised with various pre-recorded “silences” from gardens, restaurants, and parking garages.

Alburger’s Regime Change takes the terror of Ancient and Contemporary civilizations through a kaleidoscope of found musics, sung by Scola Prosek and contralto Olivia Flanigan, as a prelude to Jones’s signature over-the-top outpourings in Graveyard, where the orchestra will be augmented by bouzouki and tombstones.  In the spirit of Erling Wold’s In the Stomachs of Fleas, resoundingly presented a few concerts back, be prepared for Haloweenic smoke-and-mirrors. Fog.  Strobe lights.  Maybe even a small explosion….

Be afraid.  Be amazed.  And prepare for The Dark Serenade.

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 October 15th, 2011
TICKETS: $17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Saturday June 9th, 2011 at Old First Church & Sunday June 10th at Chapel of the Chimes

Saturday, October 15th, 2011 @ Old First Concerts

Sunday, October 16th, 2011 @ Chapel of the Chimes

Saturday, June 9th, 2012  @ Old First Concerts

Sunday, June 10th, 2012 @ Chapel of the Chimes

SFCCO was founded by composers with a mission to build new audiences of new music in San Francisco while cultivating local composers writing for traditional orchestra.

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“LOST THINGS FOUND”

Saturday June 25th, 2011 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
$17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 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, May 25, 2011 —- The remote you misplaced, the tune you can’t quite remember, the life you may have lived.   You never know what you might find at the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra’s Lost Things Found, 8pm, Saturday, June 25, at Old First Church, San Francisco — in musical items by John Beeman, Allan Crossman, Bernard Herrmann, Loren Jones, Sam Ostroff, Lisa Scola Prosek, William Severson, Martha Stoddard, and Davide Verotta.

Among the places where lost objects will be found are the Mt. Eytan Gabriel Caves, where Jones will guide two young pianists through beautiful and treacherous treasures, and perhaps even A Simple Trifle, as offered in a string trio by Severson. A cached Collage of Beeman (with soprano Maria Mikheyenko) will usher in will usher in the Twilight Zone of Bernard Herrmann’s score to Little Girl Lost, featuring viola d’amorist Roland Kato accompanied by quartets of flutes and harps, conducted by John Kendall Bailey.

Verotta will pianistically explore in Imaginations, while Stoddard leads other musical search parties in Ostroff’s earnest Before You Read, Scola Prosek’s intriguing Churchill in the Bath (showcasing tenor John Duykers), and her own diverting Windsong Variations.  The final excursion of the evening will take listeners and vocalists searchingly across an ocean of the avant and traditional in Crossman’s sing-along Loch Lomond, conducted by Mark Alburger.

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 June 25th, 2011
TICKETS: $17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Saturday October 15th, 2011 at Old First Church

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MINERAL“

Saturday September 25th, 2010 at 8 pm
Old First Presbyterian Church
1751 Sacramento Street/Van Ness, San Francisco, CA 94109
$17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 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, August 20, 2010 —-  What is reality?  Sentient beings clamoring for existence, the wind whistling through leafy vegetation, the silence and noise of this stony planet.  Come along on musical safari with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral — a tour of the Earth’s scenic and sonic wonders, in compositions by Michael Cooke, Loren Jones, Jorge Liderman, Terry Riley, Lisa Scola Prosek and Mark Alburger.

The latter’s Animal Farm: Grand Zoological Fantasy-Variations is a dark, Orwellian spin on creatures great and small, including a visual presentation of surrealistically-altered YouTube videos.  In biological distinction, Jones will offer Banyan: an aural giving-tree of multicultural musical delights.  Answering this will be a revival of Riley’s celebrated minimalist-improvisatory anthem In C, in all of its crystalline and granitic splendor.

Also along for the journey are Michael Cooke’s deeply-felt Love Letters; Lisa Scola Prosek’s vibrant Piano Sonata; a retrospective work of the late, great Jorge Liderman.  John Kendall Bailey will join Alburger in the zoomusicological tour-guiding responsibilities.

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 September 25th, 2010
TICKETS: $17 General, $14 Seniors (65 and older), $14 Full Time Students
UPCOMING SFCCO CONCERTS: Saturday June TBD, 2010 at Old First Church

Saturday, September 25th, 2010 @ Old First Concerts

Saturday, June 25th, 2011 Season Finale @ Old First Concerts

SFCCO was founded by composers with a mission to build new audiences of new music in San Francisco while cultivating local composers writing for traditional orchestra.

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SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
and Old First Concerts Present:

“SILENCE OF THE WOLVES“

Friday June 11th, 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, May 10, 2010 –  Listen carefully.  The slightest sound may be of the greatest import.  That wolf howling in the distance, just at the edge of consciousness, may change your life.  For the better.  At least, we sure hope so, as San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra presents Silence of the Wolves — an evening celebration of sounds great and small, at Old First Church on June 11, 2010, in music of John Beeman, Cindy Collins, Loren Jones, Darius Milhaud, Lisa Scola Prosek, Martha Stoddard, and Davide Verotta.

Verotta’s An Enticement of Silence and Jones’s Wolf Wood manifest the head and tail of the concert in musics gentle and disturbing — sentiments also mirrored in Beeman’s Bernsteinianly-appelated Fancy Free.  Scola Prosek provides the requisite bark and bite in three selections from the opera Ten Days (Dieci Giorni, after The Decameron of Boccaccio) with songs tragic, romantic, and comic.  Rounding out the pack are the colorful Collins Synesthesia (directed by Mark Alburger) and the wolf-whistle Cowgirl Rondo of Stoddard (conducted by the composer), with a special howl-out going for the revival of Les Six / Mills College associate Milhaud’s Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1-3, led by John Kendall Bailey.

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

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