YouTube

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Presents "Life Forces"
50th Concert!
Saturday, November 4, 2023 at 8 pm

Lakeside Presbyterian Church
201 Eucalyptus Drive, San Francisco, CA

PROGRAM

 

Hussein Al-Nasrawi is an accomplished pianist who graduated from San Francisco State University (B.M., 2018, and M.M., 2020), and was born to Iraqi parents. His passion for music is showcased through improvisation, by playing pieces by various composers, and by composing pieces representing people and places.

Hussein Al-Nasrawi

Mark   notes   video

Vance Maverick is a composer in San Francisco. He has worked for many years as a computer programmer, and has also studied composition at university, at the San Francisco Community Music Center, and privately.

Vance Maverick

Lumping and Splitting   notes   video

Davide Verotta was born in a boring Italian town close to Milano and moved to the very much more exciting San Francisco in his late twenties. He studied piano at the Milano Conservatory and piano and composition at the San Francisco Conservatory and State University (MA in composition), and at the University of California at Davis (PhD). He is an active solo and ensemble piano recitalist, and he is actively involved in the new music performance and composition scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. Recent compositions include works for orchestra, chamber opera, dance, piano solo, and different chamber ensembles. For more information please visit his web site at http://www.davideverotta.com.

Davide Verotta

Energy   notes

Dr. Mark Alburger (1957-2023, Upper Darby, PA) was an award-winning, eclectic ASCAP composer with postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He was the Music Director of SF Composers Chamber Orchestra, SF Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and The Opus Project; Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music and New Music; Adjunct Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College; and a Musicologist for Grove Online and Grove Dictionary of American Music. His principal teachers were Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti (Swarthmore College, B.A.); Jules Langert (Dominican University, M.A.); Christopher Yavelow (Claremont University, Ph.D.); and Terry Riley. Dr. Alburger had composed 399 major works, including chamber music, concertos, oratorios, operas, song cycles, and symphonies. His complete catalogue was available from New Music. (markalburgerworks.blogspot.com)

Mark Alburger

Variations on Variations of Brahms on a Theme of Haydn   video

intermission
 

The multi-instrumentalist Michael Cooke is a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy, ASCAPLUS Award and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner plays a variety of instruments: you can hear him on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and of course composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies. Michael has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began published many of Michael's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The San Francisco Beacon describes Michael's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching by Cooke Quartet, Statements by Michael Cooke and The Is by CKW Trio. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped.

Michael Cooke

Open Ended: Mark Alburger Variation   notes   video

Composer and Singer, Michael began his composing career as a singer/songwriter in Las Vegas where he formed a band and toured the Las Vegas Area. He began his classical composition in 2010 setting Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven as a song cycle for baritone, and has since arranged the cycle for Oboe, Harp, Violin and Cello. He has set an extensive amount of Art Songs to texts including Pablo Neruda, Josef Von Eichendorff, Heinrich Heine, and more. Michael particularly enjoys settings his contemporaries such as Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and poetry from an eclectic array of friends and acquaintances. In the summer of 2013 Michael had an exposition of his compositions with a Compositional Recital which featured many fine singers. His work The Highwayman, text by Alfred Noyes, was recently prepared in a virtual recital to benefit the ALSHope Foundation. Michael studies composition privately with many established composers. As well as composing; he has taken on many roles on and off-stage in the Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. These roles include teaching, directing, producing, and, most often, singing.

Michael Orlinsky

Requiem   notes   video

Part I


Part III

Soprano 1: Francielle de Barros, Paige Patrick
Soprano 2: Sarah Sims, Nancy Munn
Alto: Akane Ota, Kyle Tingzon
Tenor: Jason Patrick, Tim Salaver
Bass: Harlan Hays, Michael Orlinsky

speaker Click on the links to listen to the music. video Click on the links for video.

PERFORMERS
 

Flute
Bruce Salvisberg
Diana Gomez

Oboe
Stardust

Clarinet / Bass Clarinet *
Tom Berkelman *
Tanner Shioshita

Bassoon
Michael Cooke


Horn
Bob Satterford
Megan Cullen

Trumpet
Mike McCann

Trombone
Scott Sterling

Harp
Samantha Mulgrew

Piano
Hussein Al-Nasrawi

Percussion
Victor Flaviano
Vance Maverick
Anne Szabla


Violin I
Michael Long

Violin II
Kat Walsh

Viola
Harry Bernstein

Cello
David Wishnia

Bass
John Beeman

 

 

Mark: The piece Mark is dedicated to Mark Alburger, who was the founder of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. The piece portrays the lively and energetic qualities of Mark Alburger and celebrates his legacy. The piece was composed for bassoon, two flutes, oboe, a string quartet (Violin I, Violin II, Viola, and Cello), timpani, and piano.

Lumping and Splitting is a phrase from biology, going back to Darwin. Originally it contrasted philosophical approaches that lump lifeforms together by their similarities, or split them by their differences. Here I apply it to rhythm — the different ways a pulse can be grouped or subdivided. The piece has a steady beat, but three contrasting rhythmic modes, from jagged syncopated eighth notes, to a smooth songlike half-note pace, to a hymn like texture in walking quarter notes. The three themes take turns like the tunes in an opera overture.

Energy is a relatively short orchestral piece that is divided in three main sections. The first presents three short musical ideas that overlap and recur in a rather meandering way. Think about it as a coil that winds up, and leads to the second section. This gives the name to the piece: it never lets up, and even when the tempo slows down, percussion keeps the tension going until the section ends in a final crescendo. Then, in the third section, the ideas from the first section return, and wind down the piece.

Open Ended is a dynamic performance crafted live for the audience. Inspired by Rova's Radar techniques, Open Ended is more of a vibrant palette than a fixed composition. It's an expanding set of guidelines and games for the musicians, directed by the conductor's hand signals. Rather than following a predetermined script, the conductor composes on the spot, responding to the present moment and guiding the performers with these signals. This concept mirrors the "Soundpainting" language, a pioneering creation by Walter Thompson in Woodstock, New York, 1974. The beauty of Open Ended lies in its adaptability. With no fixed instrumentation, any number of musicians can partake. The duration is equally fluid, ranging from a brisk 5 minutes to a marathon 24 hours. Though it has been showcased several times, with memorable renditions in 2005, 2009, 2018 by the SFCCO, each performance is a unique, unrepeatable world première. Tonights version will contain a surprise tribute to SFCCO founder Mark Alburger.

While the Requiem is traditionally sung in Latin, the language of the Catholic Mass. Orlinsky has set this Requiem utilizing the traditional Latin, English texts and one movement in French. The English text is derived from the text developed for Frederick Delius' Requiem that is Secular, and in moments, Atheistic. A Requiem provides an understanding that words cannot express about death, and what may or may not be after it. In June of 2013 Michael Orlinsky received a call from his father informing him that his brother had unexpectedly passed. Michael had already began writing the “Libera me” from this Requiem as a compositional practice, and as a catharsis, he decided to continue developing the Requiem in honor of his brother Adam Elliot. The primary English text is the Delius text. It is an Atheistic text in English originally contrived by Delius and his friend Heinrich Simon. Orlinsky has juxtaposed it with the Traditional Latin text as to grasp the divinity out of both texts, and added a few other texts to form the piece. Employing the Delius text, he showcases a Humanistic approach to understanding death.

John Kendall Bailey John Kendall Bailey is an Associate Conductor with the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and is Principal Conductor and Chorus Master of the Trinity Lyric Opera, Music Director and Conductor of Voices of Musica Sacra, and Artistic Director of the San Francisco Song Festival. In 1994, Mr. Bailey founded the Berkeley Lyric Opera and served as its Music Director and Conductor until 2001. Since then he has been a guest conductor with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, Oakland Youth Orchestra, and Oakland Ballet, and music director and conductor for productions with North Bay Opera, Mission City Opera, Goat Hall Productions, Solo Opera, the Crowden School and Dominican University. From 2002-2006 he was the Chorus Master of the Festival Opera of Walnut Creek. Mr. Bailey is also a composer, and his works have been performed and commissioned in the Bay Area and abroad.

Mr. Bailey also maintains a busy performance schedule as a bass-baritone, oboist, and pianist, and has performed with the San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland East Bay, Berkeley, Redding, Napa, Sacramento, and Prometheus symphonies, American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Midsummer Mozart and West Marin music festivals, San Francisco Bach Choir, Coro Hispano de San Francisco, Pacific Mozart Ensemble, California Vocal Academy, San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, Masterworks Chorale of San Mateo, Baroque Arts Ensemble, San Francisco Korean Master Chorale, the Master Sinfonia, the Mark Morris and Merce Cunningham dance companies, Goat Hall Productions, Opera Piccola, the Berkeley, Golden Gate, and Oakland Lyric Opera companies, and many other groups. He has recorded for the Harmonia Mundi, Koch International, Pro Musica, Wildboar, Centaur, and Angelus Music labels.

Mr. Bailey has been a pre-performance lecturer for the Oakland East Bay Symphony and the San Francisco Opera, a critic for the San Francisco Classical Voice, a writer of real-time commentary for the Concert Companion, and has taught conducting at the University of California at Davis.


Michael CookeMichael Cooke is the Promotion & Fundraising Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner plays a variety of instruments: you can hear him on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study; jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory and of course composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career performing in many north Texas area symphonies. Michael has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began published many of Michael's compositions in 1994.

After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records. The San Francisco Beacon describes Michael's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching by Cooke Quartet, Statements by Michael Cooke and The Is by CKW Trio. His latest release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped. www.michaelkcooke.com