April 26 concert

Our final events of the season are right around the corner. Here are the dates, the times, and a list of the pieces in concert order with a quick summary of the concert:

April 25, 2010
4:30pm
ODC Dance Commons (351 Shotwell St., SF)
Contemporary Insights: Music and Conversation
Christian Baldini conducts and moderates a performance of Philippe Hurel's Figures libres for eight players. Complimentary snacks and wine to follow.


April 26, 2010
8:00pm (pre-concert talk at 7:15pm)
Herbst Theatre
His Own Space of Freedom (concert)

Manolis Manousakis, A Time to Break Silence: Speaking Truth to Power (2008, World Premiere)
Rufus Olivier, bassoon
Tan Dun, Water Music (2004)
Guo Wenjing, Parade (2003)
Philippe Hurel, Figures libres (2001)

The concert opens with a short video - part of a piece of music by Manolis Manousakis honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and grappling with the legacy of the civil rights movement.

Two unusual percussion pieces follow. In Academy Award-winner Tan Dun's Water Music, four percussionists (Daniel Kennedy, Christopher Froh, Loren Mach, and Benjamin Paysen) use water-based instruments to perform a piece that is as beautiful visually as it is aurally. In Parade, three percussionists (Kennedy, Froh, and Mach) simultaneously play six Chinese opera gongs arranged on a small table. A video camera will be suspended above the table, and live feed will be projected above so that the audience can see the intricate choreography of the musicians' hands. (Read more about these pieces in Christopher Froh's recent blog entry.)

The closing piece is Philippe Hurel's Figures libres, for eight players. Hurel writes, "What I wanted to show in the title is that certain emblematic figures escape the constraints given at the beginning: the idea that it is possible for an artist or an athlete... to find, within a formal discourse or a network of constraints, his own space of freedom."