This free concert by extraordinary musicians features the music of American composer Mark Abel, whose works have attracted an international array of acclaimed singers and musicians as well as widespread critical praise (more on Abel below.) This event is the anticipated debut performance of his song cycle titled 1966 featuring Australian soprano Charlotte Kelso. She is recognized as a rapidly rising star with “a beautiful timbre… [and] an expressive physicality when singing” (Stage Whispers) also lauded by Opera Magazine as “outstanding.” She will be accompanied on piano by the multi-talented Christine McLeavey.
Abel's second premiere this evening is a chamber composition duo for cello and piano A Door Opens featuring Jonah Kim on cello and Keisuke Nakagoshi on piano. It is scheduled for recorded release as a single in February 2026. Another of Abel’s chamber compositions, Out the Other Side commissioned in 2022 by Jonah Kim is also on the program.
Abel's 1966 will be preceded by the finale to Arensky's String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. Each half of this evening’s performance is punctuated with quartet finales alternatingly by Dvorak and Brahms, performed with additional world-class musicians who compose The San Francisco Music Festival, Oscar Yao on piano, Mann-Wen Lo and Eric Silberger on viola and violin, Jonah Kim and Daniel Lelchuk on cellos.
The Musical Prism of Mark Abel
Since 2012 the recordings of Mark Abel’s chamber and vocal compositions have garnered widespread praise for their astonishing psychological depth and variety of colorful styles that provoked one writer to described a recent work as “melodically forthcoming, harmoniously laid-out, often playful, eminently accessible, at times ruminative, unabashedly joyful at others.”
Abel has been called “a compositional master of intriguing contemporary music” who “represents the best strain in contemporary American composers.” Critics have characterized his works as music that “sits comfortably within the classical tradition” and “fuse chamber and contemporary styles seamlessly together.”
Abel’s compositions are evenly divided between vocal and instrumental chamber compositions, as are the premiere performances in this concert. Gramaphone praised his works as " ... music compelling in narrative depth and energy." Abel’s vocal works can be both “commanding and disquieting, ... gorgeous and complex.” His song cycle 1966, heard on his "Spectrum" album (along with Out the Other Side), has been described as “vividly dramatic and poignant,” and also “evocative, with a wistful beauty.”
Performed in the intimate candle-lit Swedenborgian Church, a hallowed national historic landmark, this promises to be a powerfully enchanting evening.
Seating is limited to the first 100 guests.