Double or Nothing: Double Reeds of the Bay
Featuring double reeds in solo and chamber contexts, this concert includes new music on all four primary double reed instruments: oboe, English horn, bassoon, and contrabassoon. Kicking off the concert is David Schneider’s memorizingly fluid bassoon trio Living Clay. Bay Area composer/oboist then performs Mary Jane Leach’s Xanthippe’s Rebuke, a piece for oboe and prerecorded track involving eight additional oboes. Following is a surprisingly sweet though still inevitably lumbering contrabassoon duet, Sonatina d’Amore, by Daniel Dorff. A new piece by Bay Area composer, Kyle Hovatter, for two sopranos, bassoon, and guitar gives the program some lyrics to digest with Three Poems by Elinor Wylie. Next is the plaintive Apollo’s Lament for oboe/English horn, viola, and harp by San Francisco composer Marko Bajzer. Finishing the program the a woodwind quintet by Mohammad Fairouz regarding the Lebanese civil war, Jebel Lebnan.