Trust them or hate them, music critics provide an invaluable service by provoking discourse that gives music a second life far beyond the concert hall. This fall, the Conservatory hosts The Stephen and Cynthia Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, a week-long program that brings several of the country's most esteemed writers and commentators together with students and the public to discuss, demonstrate and teach music criticism. From November 5-10, performances by the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, Cal Performances and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra will serve as subjects for student writers from the Conservatory, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Yale School of Music, while a Writers Panel of the nation's top music journalists delivers pre-concert lectures and panel discussions.  Read more

Conservatory grad students will be able to tap the resources of San Francisco's main hub for the performance, creation and promotion of new music, thanks to a partnership spearheaded by the Conservatory's Professional Development Center. The SFCM Center for New Music Membership Award will give five selected students special access to performance, rehearsal and meeting spaces at the Center for New Music, as well as to events and workshops, the center's library -- even perks like mail and photocopying. The award is open to all first-year graduate students interested in performing or curating works by living composers (including themselves). Awards will be given out next spring, but the partnership kicked off on April 28 when guitar students and department chair David Tanenbaum '78 performed a concert at the Center including works by student Matthew Lyons, alumnus Renaud Côté-Giguère '13 and faculty member and acclaimed guitarist Sérgio Assad. Already a popular performance venue among alums, the Center for New Music presents numerous SFCM acts this month alone, including Del Sol String Quartet on May 22, Phonochrome with the Guerrilla Composers' Guild on May 29 and Areon Flutes with Mobius Trio as part of the monthly Switchboard Presents series on May 16. More information

The National Brass Ensemble will use history as a guide when it performs its inaugural Bay Area concert in June. A who's-who team of the nation's top brass players, the ensemble is paying homage to a legendary 1968 performance in which brass players from the Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras came together and, in only nine hours of taping, recorded the Grammy Award-winning album The Antiphonal Music of Gabrieli. Faculty member Timothy Higgins, principal trombone with the San Francisco Symphony, is rearranging pieces from the original recording to suit the new group's forces. He's also arranging additional works by Giovanni Gabrieli to be performed on June 12 at the Green Music Center and released subsequently on CD. Higgins spoke with Take Note about the record that inspired the project and the inspiration he himself feels when playing with this unparalleled group of peers.
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The Green Music Center is offering a 20% discount on tickets to the National Brass Ensemble concert on June 12. Enter the promo code "SFCM" when purchasing tickets.

Viskontas on Music and the Mind
In a talk presented by the California Academy of Sciences, faculty member and neuroscientist Indre Viskontas '08 discusses her ground-breaking research into neural networks and what they reveal about the workings of memory and creativity. Viskontas, a professional soprano, has published ground-breaking research in the field of cognitive neuroscience and enlisted her chamber ensemble Vocallective in an ongoing project that explores how music can provoke powerful responses, from alleviating suffering to creating a sense of hope and fostering community. The evening features a special performance by Vocallective including Viskontas and other Conservatory alumni. (Also see this month's featured video at right.)
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Choral Composers Share Triumph
In a split decision, three student composers won first prize in the Conservatory's Choral Composer Competition. Judges chose Nick Benavides '14 and Shase Hernandez '14, both students of Dan Becker, and Jan Stoneman '15, student of Elinor Armer, to share a pot of $1000 in prize money. Their works were selected from 19 compositions performed by three skilled choirs, including San Francisco Choral Artists, International Orange Chorale and the Conservatory Chorus. Chorus conductor and composition faculty David Conte was honored by the chorus with a plaque commending his visionary leadership of the ensemble for the past 15 years. Conte gives up his baton next season to become chair of the Conservatory composition department.

Chicago Symphony Releases "Energy Symphony" By Bates
Alternative Energy, a sweeping work by Conservatory faculty member Mason Bates, has just been released in a recording by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its eminent conductor Riccardo Muti. Bates wrote the work as CSO composer-in-residence for a 2012 premiere. A time-traveling tone poem that uses symphonic and electronic effects to evoke nothing less than the past and future of industrial civilization, the piece is available as an environmentally friendly digital-only download.

Watson Wins in San Jose
Tenor Robert Watson '13 won second place and $10,000 at the Irene Dalis Vocal Competition in San Jose. Now in its eighth year, the competition has become a major forum for operatic talent from across the country and awards a sum total of $50,000 in cash prizes.  San Francisco Classical Voice critic Jason Victor Serinus wrote that Watson sang with "thrilling gravitas and authority" and that his rendition of "Ah, la paterna mano" from Verdi's Macbeth "was of heroic proportions, the undertones as impressive as the sweetness on top." Watson, a student of César Ulloa, appears this summer as a young artist with Wolf Trap Opera in Virginia. Soprano Sara Duchovnay '12, a student of Catherine Cook, and Kindra Scharich '03 were among the competition's ten finalists.

Becker's Show of Hands Returns
Show of Hands, a dance work by Garrett + Moulton production with a score by Composition Department Chair Dan Becker, is featured in ODC Theater's Walking Distance Dance Festival-SF on May 31. The alumni ensemble Friction Quartet provides the live soundtrack (and is occasionally enlisted in the dance itself).  Following the work's premiere last fall, San Francisco Chronicle critic Allan Ulrich reserved special praise for Becker's score, saying "It's an eminently attractive piece, larded with suggestions of Bartók and Brahms and none the worse for it. This music deserves a second life away from the dance." More information

Upcoming Concerts

The concert season is winding down, but there's still one more week to catch student recitals before they finish the school year. Check our performance schedule.

Take Note will go on monthly schedule over the summer. Look for issues in early June, July and August before bi-weekly publication resumes in September.

In This Issue

Cypress' Schubert CD 

 

The Cypress String Quartet, featuring alumni violinists Cecily Ward '96 and Tom Stone '96, has just released a CD of Schubert works that marks their first collaborative recording. Acclaimed American cellist Gary Hoffman joins Cypress for Schubert's String Quintet D956, the composer's final (and, some say, best) chamber work. The CD also includes the Quartettsatz D703, which Schubert conceived as the first movement of a twelfth string quartet which he never completed.  

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Erik Jekabson
Old First Concerts
Sunday, May 18

Lara Downes
Center for New Music
Tuesday, May 20

Trumpeter Erik Jekabson '06 plays Duke Ellington standards and rarities in new arrangements penned for his 'String-tet', an group that includes violist Charith Premawardhana '06. Their performance at Old First Concerts is a collaboration with Jazz in the Neighborhood, an organization founded by faculty member Mario Guarneri that unites Bay Area students with top jazz musicians.
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Pre-College alumna and Steinway Artist Lara Downes has won national praise for combining expert musicianship and showmanship. She plays a tribute to jazz greats Billie Holiday and Thelonious Monk at the Center for New Music in a concert also featuring pianist and composer Jed Distler.