Any composer has to reckon with the work of Ludwig van Beethoven. As John Adams put it: “Another rite of passage that one must endure, if you’re to be a ‘classical’ composer, is to share the bed with one of the large guys.” Adams’ new work, Absolute Jest, is inspired by Beethoven’s more intimate works. [...]
As the Orchestra performs its last weekend of American Mavericks Festival concerts here in San Francisco and prepares to go on tour to Ann Arbor, Chicago, and New York, we’ve been seeing a lot of odd and unusual things lying around backstage. Yesterday morning, I came upon this case, which at about five feet long, [...]
Join us Saturday, March 17 at 1:30pm PDT for a live webcast of the San Francisco Symphony’s “Talking About Creativity” event, part of our American Orchestra Forum. Hear San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, SF Symphony Executive Director Brent Assink, composers John Adams and Mason Bates, Margo Drakos of InstantEncore.com, Ed Sanders of [...]
This weekend at the SF Symphony means the world premiere of not one, not two, but THREE new works by maverick composers. There are the first performances of Mason Bates’ Mass Transmission and John Adams’ Absolute Jest, and on Sunday at 2 pm Meredith Monk, her vocal ensemble, and members of the San Francisco Symphony [...]
TGIF!!! Tonight following the American Mavericks Festival performance of Mason Bates’ brand new work Mass Transmission led by Donato Cabrera with organist Paul Jacobs, Mason Bates on electronica, and the grammy-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Bates will reappear in the nightclub-like atmosphere of Davies After Hours in the second tier lobby as his alter-ego, DJ [...]
It’s not every day that you get to hear a sneak preview of a new piece of music by a great living American composer—unless you work at the SF Symphony during American Mavericks! Today, the St. Lawrence String Quartet is in the house, rehearsing the piece the Symphony commissioned from John Adams for the Mavericks [...]
The newest maverick on this year’s American Mavericks festival is Mason Bates. An Oakland resident, Mason has created his own voice by writing music that is not only fun to play but fun to listen to by incorporating electronic elements into his orchestra textures. He’s this year’s Project San Francisco resident composer here at the [...]
Some great reviews are coming in of the first concerts in the American Mavericks Festival: “After weeks of build-up, the American Mavericks Festival opened Thursday night at Davies Symphony Hall. It delivered what Michael Tilson Thomas has been promising: to connect the dots through a century’s worth of music that somehow defines an American sound [...]
Here’s a neat 20-second timelapse video of the stage set-up and dress rehearsal for John Cage’s Song Books, with Michael Tilson Thomas, Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, and Jessye Norman and the San Francisco Symphony. You can’t hear the blender whir, but you can get some idea of what will unfold when the musicians perform [...]