San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at the CROSSROADS Series Celebrating Pauline OLIVEROS and Steven SCHICK MAR 23 - 24, 2018 Z Space San Francisco, CA UPCOMING EVENT San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in the COMMUNITY Series Season Celebration: Sound & Wine APR 21, 2018 • 2:30pm - 4pm • Schroeders • San Francisco, CA Join us for an afternoon of live music, great food, good company, and some of our region’s finest wine (and beer). We hope you’ll join us to San Francisco Contemporary Music Players relive your favorite works from the season or hear them for the first time. This year’s program is hosted and performed by some of the leading The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players (SFCMP), a 24-member ensemble contemporary classical music specialists in the Bay Area: SFCMP musicians of highly skilled musicians, performs innovative contemporary classical music Kate Campbell, Hrabba Atladottir, Hannah Addario-Berry, and Sara Rathke. based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Host, Kate Campbell SFCMP aims to nourish the creation and dissemination of new works through high-quality musical performances, commissions, education and community Cornelius CARDEW, outreach. SFCMP promotes the music of composers from across cultures The Great Learning, Paragraph 7 and stylistic traditions who are creating a vast and vital 21st-century musical language. SFCMP seeks to share these experiences with as many people as Danny CL AY, possible, both in and outside of traditional concert settings. Playbook Our weekend festival Celebrating Pauline Oliveros and Steven Schick is part of LJ WHITE, SFCMP’s at the Crossroads Series, which celebrates the work of legacy composers fly into the light alongside cutting-edge composers from across generations: By meeting at the crossroads of generations we reveal how the latest works are grounded in timeless questions. TICKETS SFCMP.ORG 2 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players SFCMP.org • 3 The SFCMP Players SFCMP Artistic Director Steven Schick Tod Brody, flute Percussionist, conductor, and author Steven Schick was born in Iowa Kyle Bruckmann, oboe and raised in a farming family. For Sarah Rathke, oboe forty years he has championed Jeff Anderle, clarinet contemporary music by commissioning Peter Josheff, clarinet or premiering more than one hundred- Adam Luftman, trumpet fifty new works. He was the founding Peter Wahrhaftig, tuba percussionist of the Bang on a Can All- Stars (1992-2002) and served as Artistic Chris Froh, percussion Director of the Centre International Loren Mach, percussion de Percussion de Genève (2000-2005). William Winant, percussion Schick is founder and Artistic Director Nick Woodbury, percussion of the percussion group, “red fish blue Kate Campbell, piano fish.” Currently he is Music Director of Karen Gottlieb, harp the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and Artistic Director of the San Francisco David Tanenbaum, guitar Contemporary Music Players through Hrabba Altadottir, violin the 2017-18 season, which is his last conducting including appearances Graeme Jennings, violin with SFCMP. with the BBC Scottish Symphony Susan Freier, violin Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Nova Chamber Ensemble Roy Malan, violin In 2012 he became the first Artist- and the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble. Meena Bhasin, viola in-Residence with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). Schick is Among his acclaimed publications Nanci Severance, viola founder and Artistic Director of “Roots are a book, “The Percussionist’s Art: Hannah Addario-Berry, cello and Rhizomes,” a summer course on Same Bed, Different Dreams,” and Stephen Harrison, cello contemporary percussion music held numerous recordings. Steven Schick is Richard Worn, contrabass at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He Distinguished Professor of Music at the photo by Stephen B. Hahn maintains a lively schedule of guest University of California, San Diego. 4 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players SFCMP.org • 5 Message from Artistic Director, Steven Schick Karen in their rendering of Lou That’s already a lot to be grateful for, Harrison. You felt that Lou was but I’m just getting started. Brother David Steindl-Rast, a intelligence and personal commitment standing on stage with a benevolent Benedictine monk, who has written have kept us going strong. For Mason, hand on their shoulders. The memory There were some retirements during beautifully about the role of spirituality Jon, Adam, and now Amadeus who that most stays with me of Susan, my tenure. SFCMP stalwarts Dan, Hall, in modern life, has an apt simile for along with John slashed through a refined musician of the highest Larry, and Rufus. They set the gold gratitude. He says it’s like one of even the thorniest logistical thickets. level, was watching her at Crissy field, standard for excellence on stage and those classical fountains where water For board members and donors too striding through the wet grass and for Mencschheit everywhere they went. spills into a succession of marble numerous to mention, but who have into the mist to lead a ragtag band basins. Gratitude fills a basin until it included the ever elegant Susan and of middle-schoolers. Graeme, in spite No one rises high without standing on overflows and we hear the sparkling George, who continues to support us of his well-deserved reputation as a firm base—bass in this case. Peter sound of thanksgiving as it splashes even after his passing. one of the best violinists to be found laid the groundwork for a searing from one basin to the next. But he is But my deepest gratitude goes to anywhere, made his most indelible performance of Déserts at the Fort no naïf, Brother David, and cautions my colleagues, the musicians of impression on me without playing a Mason Center, and Richard brought us against our contemporary predilection the San Francisco Contemporary note, as he marched around the stage, to tears with his eloquent playing in toward incomplete gratitude. Very Music Players. Let’s start with the turning pages, and tightening his bow Quatre Chants. often, before gratitude fills a basin, percussionists. Chris, Loren, and in Mark Applebaum’s Rabbit Hole. we enlarge it by searching for more or Nick define excellence in percussion Adam brought us dizzying trumpet To Hrabba, poetess of the violin, who bigger or better. The basin never really playing. Standing side-by-side with playing. can play anything you put in front fills, and though we often have a vague them in teve Reich’s Drumming was of her and to Kyle, who gives us his sense of gratitude (think of finding the nothing short of thrilling. And if you From Tod and David, two of my breath while taking ours away; to a perfect parking spot or evading jury want to get a glimpse of true heroes favorite musicians anywhere, who trio of the best clarinetists you’ll find duty), we too rarely give voice to the of the percussion revolution, look no offered so many extraordinary solo anywhere—Bill, Jeff, and Peter—who effervescent sounds of thanksgiving. further than Dan and Willie. Making and ensemble moments, the abiding could make both Fletcher Henderson But not tonight. Tonight the water is music with the veterans of SFCMP was impression will always be their subtle and Pierre Boulez proud; and to gushing and rushing. extraordinary—simultaneously rooted and sophisticated rendering of their Sarah whose elegant performance of Tonight, I am grateful… in our traditions and looking forward. Takemitsu duo. Nanci wowed us Octandre on my first concert changed for seven extraordinary years with the Warm thanks to Roy the anchor of us repeatedly with viola playing that was my view of the piece. Music for 18 San Francisco Contemporary Music all for his highly moving performances both technically perfect and highly Musicians introduced us to Kate, and Players. For Dick and Don; Carrie, Rozie from Lang to Ligeti. And there was the emotional. then she was there for practically and now Lisa, whose administrative breathtaking moment with Stephen 6 • San Francisco Contemporary Music Players SFCMP.org • 7 every concert, throwing herself at time associates who have seen the Thank You Steven Schick for 7 Years of Dedication to SFCMP! the vicissitudes of Ferneyhough, the institution through good and bad canons of Abrahamsen, and in the case times; what I feel when I think of the of Luciano Chessa’s piece, at the piano intensity of our music-making and the itself. laughter we shared in rehearsal; what I feel remembering the little triumphs of Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all. every concert, often as the sole balm for real tragedies elsewhere in life; But thanks, even as profoundly and what I feel when I think of the young personally as I feel it, may not be composers we have given voice to and enough. It seems too oriented towards the established works we have remade the past, and though it is in the nature as new; what I feel when I look at our of these “at the Crossroads” concerts to intrepid audience coming early or our seek to knit together past and present, intrepid percussionists staying late I find myself looking increasingly to the to pack up; what I feel when I see the future. The future will surely be bright families of the players in attendance for the San Francisco Contemporary and when I think of the way Brenda, Music Players. With the arrival of Eric in addition to her full life in land at the artistic helm and new ensemble conservation, has embraced SFCMP as members Hannah and Meena, there is fully as I have; when I take it all in, the light and music and community ahead music, the people, the resonance of the of us all. past and the promise of the future: What I feel is love. At this bittersweet moment of departure, I hear the sound of water ~Steven Schick overflowing in gratitude.