Jeff Kaliss has featured and reviewed classical, jazz, rock, and world musics and other entertainment for the San Francisco Chronicle and a host of other regional, national, international, and web-based publications. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, is a published poet, and is the author of I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & the Family Stone (Backbeat Books) and numerous textbook and encyclopedia entries, album liner notes, and festival program notes.
Ever-curious and adventurous, violinist Rachel Barton Pine reunites with Michael Morgan, her former mentor, and the Sacramento Philharmonic to showcase a suite by African-American classical composer William Grant Still and a concerto by Sergei Prokofiev.
When considering this well-performed recording, don’t place too much significance in its title. Geographically, historically, and stylistically, the five compositions are stretched so far that they defy any programmatic theme, though the Germans may have bought into the cutesy, New World concept more quickly than those of us who actually live here.
Andrew McKenna Lee has always been drawn to the sort of "rolling polyphony" of the classical guitar. For his Old First Concerts recital here on May 21, Lee will span the guitar repertoire, from Scarlatti to Milhaud, and he’ll showcase his own physically demanding and aurally dynamic Five Refractions of a Prelude by Bach.
In the late '50s, musician and scholar Gunther Schuller attempted to formally integrate jazz and classical music under a concept he dubbed Third Stream. It was a turbulent but persistent confluence, which will be in evidence in an upcoming San José Chamber Orchestra concert.
“This collaboration is what I’m in it for,” declared the clearly delighted soprano Ann Moss, with a sweeping gesture that took in her fellow performers and the audience at the Noe Valley Ministry on Sunday afternoon.
Decades after its ascension to the glittery throne of Glam Rock, the band Queen continues to resonate loudly in pop culture. You could hear Queen’s imperative Don’t Stop Me Now resonating from the loudspeakers at AT&T Park last week as hoi polloi sought their seats for a preseason skirmish between the San Francisco Giants and the visiting Oakland A’s.
Now a senior at San Francisco’s School of the Arts (SOTA), with an eye on college, singer Patricia St. Peter feels as if she grew up with Chanticleer. That 12-voice, Grammy-winning men’s chorus is better-known for reaching back to the repertoire of the Renaissance than for stretching out to the next generation of choristers.
Restless adolescents and concerned parents alike, all around the Bay Area, have discovered that a symphony orchestra can be a great place for kids to hang out.Leo Page-Blau and
An infrequently mounted masterpiece, bounteous with beautiful and dramatic passages, and delivered by a cast headed by fine principal voices, forms a strong foundation for edifying opera.
