Now in its 37th year, the San Francisco Choral Society, a nonprofit symphonic chorus made up of 160 auditioned singers, is well known for commissioning new pieces by both established and up-and-coming composers. This year, Artistic Director Robert Geary commissioned local composer Eric Tuan. The world premiere of Tuan's Three Portraits: Voices of Chinese American Women from Early California opens the group's fifth annual Summer Festival Chorus concert at Davies Symphony Hall on Saturday, Aug. 15, at 7 p.m., followed by Carl Orff's immensely popular 20th-century cantata Carmina Burana.
Geary, who has been on the podium with SF Choral for 32 years, said he met Tuan when he was just 10 years old and singing with the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, which Geary founded and led for 37 years. He describes Tuan as a prodigy, and now a composer very much in demand in the Bay Area and beyond.
The text of Three Portraits is based on firsthand testimonies by three Chinese American women from 19th-century California, regarding suffrage and racial discrimination.
"This music is a Chinese American history lesson about something none of us ever knew about," said Geary. "I learned so much just by reading what was in the music."
Tuan has written a number of pieces that illuminate historical events, and as a conductor, favors creative programming built around themes of social justice. He has been commissioned by many local choral groups, including Volti, the professional new-music vocal ensemble Geary founded in 1979.
The composer is also a singer and a choral conductor. He is artistic director of the Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, taking over from Geary in 2019, and of Convivium, the chamber chorus he founded in 2012.
Three Portraits will be performed by the chorus, a string orchestra, and solo trumpet — quite a contrast to Carmina Burana. That will be a semi-staged production with a full orchestra and three soloists: soprano Chelsea Hollow, tenor Sam Faustine, and baritone Eugene Brancoveanu, joined by members of the San Francisco Youth Chorus. It also carries original staging and choreography by Rotimi Agbabiaka, the Nigerian-born multidisciplinary artist. Geary explained that SF Choral has staged the work with choreography once before, but that this year's production will be entirely new.
Throughout his long career, Geary has championed new music and pushed at the boundaries of the form.
"I have always wanted to be a little bit on the edge or outside the box," said Geary. "I feel like music is a function of culture, and culture is a living thing, and at any moment in time, there are trends and threads that contribute to the zeitgeist."
The California Chamber Symphony will provide the orchestral music. For Carmina, Geary's wife — the pianist, composer, and conductor Sue Bohlin — joins Bryan Baker, SF Choral's longtime associate conductor and accompanist, onstage at the piano and celeste.
Geary, who has commissioned hundreds of pieces over the years for his various groups, is especially excited about presenting Tuan at Davies Hall for the first time.
"Tuan is emerging. He has been in choral culture, so he hasn't yet fully emerged into the orchestral world. And this is his first piece that includes instruments, so I am very deliberately putting him on the Davies Hall stage," said Geary.
