After 55 years, one of the West Coast's longest-running and largest new-music ensembles has decided that its own name is too long. Beginning with the 2026–2027 season, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players will go by sfCONTEMPORARY.
This rebrand comes with the group's 56th season, titled Luminous Refractions and made up of four mainstage concerts at the Brava Theater and Taube Atrium Theater. The concerts will feature music by 17 composers — seven of them Bay Area–based — and seven West Coast premieres. The programming leans toward large-ensemble writing, which the group calls a continuing artistic focus.
At the heart of the season is Generation, a commission from San Francisco composer Pamela Z that will receive its world premiere in April, with support from a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. The piece explores intergenerationality. "The process of working in a chamber ensemble involves a connectivity between the members that defies age," Z was quoted in the announcement. "The wisdom of the elders and the freshness of the youngers are mutually beneficial to the musicians and to the art."
The season opens Oct. 3 at Brava with Bay Bridges, devoted almost entirely to works by local composers: Matthew Evan Taylor, Shuying Li, Inés Thiebaut, and Michael Gilbertson, plus Darius Milhaud's Stanford Serenade. Glassworks (Feb. 7, Taube Atrium) celebrates Philip Glass's 90th birthday, pairing arrangements from that title work with pieces by Cassandra Miller, Mason Bates, and David Lang. Foundry (April 10, Taube Atrium) includes the abovementioned Pamela Z premiere, along with pieces by Mark Gustavson, Laurie San Martin, and Sofia Jen Ouyang. Alchemy (May 2, Brava) closes the season with music composed by Juri Seo, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Asha Srinivasan, and the West Coast premiere of a new Aaron Jay Kernis work written for ensemble guitarist David Tanenbaum.
Artistic Director Eric Dudley hosts an “Under the Hood” talk before each concert. Three free ARTZenter Institute Emerging Composer concerts (Sept. 8, Jan. 5, and June 8, all at Brava) will premiere sinfonietta works by 12 composers.
Subscriptions are on sale now and single tickets go on sale Sept. 14 through City Box Office.
More details at sfcmp.org
