Hey, big arts fans! Spend a little time with San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra in Languorous Liaisons — 8:00pm, Saturday, May 21st, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (1111 O’Farrell) — for close encounters of the musical kind, including Harry Bernstein‘s lovable Quartetto Amabile, featuring the sensuous strings of the ensemble. A rendezvous of a decidedly animated nature will be provide by Lisa Scola Prosek, in her spirited Mantilla (A Game Played with Cow Chips). Plangent-yet-pungent meetings will also be struck up in
Michael Cooke‘s phantasmagorical Fantasy in D…(ish), where every player manifests an independent union. Davide Verotta will offer the collaboration of virtuosi, in a diverting and resonant Divertimento per Piano, Violin e Orchestra; while Mark Alburger evokes the many loves of Alma Maria Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel, via a dizzyingly retro-post-minimalist/modernist Eight Waltzes, from his opera celebrating and denigrating the titular Austro-American composer-socialite.
John Beeman‘s Ishi: Scene III wraps up this evening of assignations, in cross-cultural diversities and unities that will please the ear and elevate the heart.
Cost: $25 General, sliding scale
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
Open Ended by Michael Cooke is a very versatile work that is composed live before your eyes and ears. Based on Rova‘s Radar techniques, Open Ended is less of a composition and more of a color or tool palette. It is an ever-growing collection of rules and games for the performers that are triggered by hand signals by the conductor/composer. The conductor/composer then composes the piece live using these hand signals to guide the performers. The ability to compose with what happens in the moment, in real time, is what is required to produce this piece. This similar to the “Soundpainting” language was created by Walter Thompson in Woodstock, New York in 1974. Open Ended has no set instrumentation and can be played by any number of performers. It also has no set length; the piece could last 5 minutes or 24 hours.