MARK ALBURGER, 2019: October 5 - SFCCO All That Fall

SAN FRANCISCO
COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director

All That Fall
8pm, Saturday, October 5, 2019
St. Teresa of Avila Catholic Church, 1490 19th Street, San Francisco, CA
Mark Alburger, conducting

Program

Kat Walsh (b. 1982)
     In Waves (2019)

        SFCCO String Quartet

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
     Pulcinella Suite (1922)
          I. Sinfonia [Domenico Gallo, 1730-1768]
        II. Serenata [Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, 1710-1736]
          III. Scherzino – Allegretto – Andantino [Gallo]
        IV. Tarantella [Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, 1692-1766]
        V. Toccata [Carlo Ignazio Monza, 1680-1739]
        VI. Gavotta (con due variazioni) [Monza]
        VII. Vivo [Pergolesi]
        VIII. Minuetto – Finale [Pergolesi - Monza]

San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra

    Intermission

Michael Cooke
Michael Cox
Crystal Pascucci
   Impromptu C3 (2019)

          SFCCO Mixed Trio

Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
     Broke Dance Intermezzi (2019)
                B, Op. 298
                   IVb8. Bergamasque Mask (Dandy)
                     IVb9. Ice Bergerette (In the Brush)
                     IVb10. CrumBolero (Militaire)
                     IVb11. Bonne Bon… (Anatomic Memorial)
                     IVb11. Bechtel Bouree (Precipitous)
                     IVb12. Brando Bransle (Brawl)
                          IVb13 …de Bourgogne (Red)
                          IVb14 …de Champagne (Mummers)
               G, Op. 303
                    IVg4. Syncretic Gavot Gavotta Gavotte (Alpha-Omega)
                    IVg5. Dexterous Ghost... (Double Duo)
                    IVg6. Great Grass…. ('80's)
                    IVg7. Danse Grotesque (Revels)
                    IVg8. Gumboot... (Miners' Minors)
               X, Op. 320
                    IVx1. X... (Xenia)
                    IVx2. Xibelani (Xylophone)

Charlie Sharzer (b. 1990)
     The First Week of Freshman Year (2008)
            The First Day (Prelude and Fugue)
            The First Night (Passacaglia)
            The First Crush (Minuet and Trio)
            The First Party (Boureé)
            The First Day of School (Canon)

            San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger                    Music Director and Conductor
Erling Wold                        Associate Music Director
Harriet March Page            Box Office

Piccolo / Flute / Alto Flute
Harry Bernstein
Bruce Salvisberg

Oboe
Stardust

Clarinet
Michael Kimbell

Alto Saxophone
Michael Cooke

Bassoon
Michael Cooke
Kat Walsh

Trumpet
Michael Cox

Horn
Bob Satterford
Alex Strachen

Wagner Tuba
Alex Strachen

Piano
Megan Cullen

Percussion
Victor Flaviani
Benedict Lim

Violin I
Kristen Kline

Violin II
Harry Bernstein
Kat Walsh

Viola
Charlie Sharzer

Cello
Irene Herrmann
Crystal Pascucci

String Bass
John McGrew

DONATIONS:

Archangel
(Contributing $1000 +)
Mark Alburger
Alexis Alrich
John Beeman
Michael & Lisa Cooke
John Hiss & Nancy Katz
Lisa Scola Prosek
Sue Rosen
Erling Wold

Angel
(Contributing $500-$999)
Adobe, inc
Anne Baldwin
George & Connie Cooke
Anne Dorman
David & Joyce Graves
Ken Howe
Kenneth Johnson
Hanna Hymans-Ostroff
Anne Szabla
Davide Verotta

Benefactor
(Contributing $100-$499)
Christopher & Sue Bancroft Kenneth & Ruth Baumann
Susan M. Barnes
Marina Berlin & Anthony Parisi
Bruce & Betsy Carlson
Patrick & Linda Condry
Rachel Condry
Steven Cooke
Patti Deuter
J.D. Deaver
Thomas Goss
James Henriques
Gail Hoben
Ann-Marie Hogan
Brian Holmes
Marilyn Hudson
Susan Kates
Ronald Mcfarland
Ken & Jan Milnes
Gail Piestrup
Elizabeth Powell
Roberta Robertson
James Schrempp
Stardust
Martha Stoddard
James Whitmore
Vivaty, Inc

Donor
(Contributing $50-$99)
Paul & Barbara Boniker
Mark Easterday
Sabrina Huang
Donna & Joseph Lanam
Harriet March Page
Larry Ochs
CF Peters
Kent & Catherine Smith
Barbara & Mark Stefik
Robert & Frances Stine

Patron
(Contributing up to $49)
Susie Bailey
Schuyler Bailey
Harry Bernstein
Joanne Carey
Hannes & Linda Lamprecht
Elinor Lamson
Anthony Mobilia
Deborah Slater

MARK ALBURGER (b. 1957) studied with Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti at Swarthmore College (B.A.), Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Jules Langert at Dominican University (M.A.), Tom Flaherty and Christopher Yavelow at Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D.), and Terry Riley. He is Founder and Music Director of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and The Opus Project, Conductor of San Francisco Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, Professor in Music Literature at Diablo Valley College, and Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal. Alburger has been the recipient of many honors, awards, and commissions -- including yearly ASCAP Standard Awards; grants from Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum, MetLife, and Theatre Bay Area; funding from the Marra, Zellerbach, Hewlett, and Getty Foundations; and performances by ensembles and orchestras throughout the world. Alburger's concert and dramatic compositions combine atonal, collage, neoclassic, pop, and postminimal sensibilities -- often in overall frameworks troped on pre-existent material. His complete works (332 opus numbers to date) are being issued on recordings from New Music. 500+ videos of his compositions can be found on the DrMarkAlburger YouTube channel, as well as many other websites. Upcoming performances include Opus programs, 8pm, Saturday, October 19 and November 9, Diablo Valley College Music Building; and Fresh Voice 19, 8pm, Saturday, November 23, Community Music Center, San Francisco.

BROKE DANCE INTERMEZZI: B, Op. 298; G, Op. 303; and X, Op. 320 (February 18, March 14, and June 10, 2019) are three of 26 collections of additional dances which can be inserted between (or follow) the Sarabande and Gigue of BROKE DANCE SUITE, OP. 290. The eighth-to-fifteenth items of the 22-piece second volume hip-hop through broken gyrations of Gabriel Faure, Arnold Schoenberg, Teilmann Susato, Hector Berlioz, Gustav Holst, Maurice Ravel, George Crumb, Japanese ritual music, J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, Ian Anderson, Matthew Owens, Alex North, Claude Gervaise, and Francis Poulenc. The last five pieces of the eight-part ensuing collection add samplings of Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Frederick Loewe, Leonard Bernstein, and evocations of Wovoka, Sioux warriors, and South African gold laborers. The concluding two-piece set references Alan Hovhaness, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Chopi xylophone music, and Camille Saint-Saens...

CHARLIE SHARZER (b. 1990) has been composing for 20 years, and moved to the Bay Area from New York late last year. He studied at Yale University, and graduated with degrees in music composition and astrophysics. His music has been featured by organizations including the Atticus Brass Quintet, the Jack Quartet, and the Yale Symphony Orchestra. In addition to composing, Charlie has performed as a violist with the Yale Symphony, Chelsea Symphony in New York, and various other ensembles on each coast. He was the music director of Yale’s Davenport Pops Orchestra for the 2011-2012 season. Apart from music, Charlie conducted research detecting extrasolar planets and moons, was a member of the 2012 Teach for America corps in Newark, NJ, and now works for Palantir Technologies in Palo Alto.

THE FIRST WEEK OF FRESHMAN YEAR (2008) is based on a series of sketches depicting a succession of events at the very beginning of college. Each is based on a traditional 17th or 18th Century form that goes haywire depending on the situation. Together, they portray the (collective - don’t judge!) biography of moving away from home for the first time. The piece is constructed in a series of continuous movements:

IGOR STRAVINSKY is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. He first achieved international fame with three ballets performed in Paris by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). His Russian period was followed in the 1920's an extensive neoclassic phase, featuring traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), and drawing on earlier styles. In the 1950's and 60's, the composer adopted serial procedures -- compositions from these decades nonetheless shared traits his earlier output, including rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of two- and three-note cells, clarity of form and unusual instrumentation.

PULCINELLA (1920) is a 21-movement, one-act ballet for chamber orchestra and three vocalists, on stock commedia dell'arte characters, commissioned by Diaghilev, who wanted a work based on what was then considered to be music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, found in the libraries of London and Naples (later scholarship has determined that many of the pieces were actually composed Domenico Gallo, Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Carlo Ignazio Monza, and Alessandro Parisotti). Although the composer was initially unenthusiastic about the project, he later took to the pre-existent compositions avidly, tarting them up in a variety of manners, becoming progressively more "his own" as the piece unfolds. Pulcinella is a crucial landmark on Stravinsky's path to neoclassicism: "my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course -- the first of many love affairs in that direction -- but it was a look in the mirror, too." The SUITE was written two years later, in eight movements, as a purely instrumental collection. Subsequent to this, the composer also issued several versions, most entitled Suite Italian for solo strings and piano.

KAT WALSH (b. 1982) is a musical polymath, adept at bassoon, violin, viola, and compositon.

IN WAVES (2019) reflects the composer's minimalist enthusiasms in its phase-shifted counterpoint.

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