MARK ALBURGER, 2022: October 22 - San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra presents Circling!

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Mark Alburger, Music Director
presents

Circling!
8pm, Saturday, October 22, 2022

 Lakeside Presbyterian Church

201 Eucalyptus Drive, San Francisco, CA 

Our 2nd Live Performance, Post-Pandemic Provisos! 

Monica Chew (b. 1977)

Ghost

Office (2022)

 John Beeman (b. 1954)

Awakening (2022)

Stardust (b. 1962)

Lobelia's Lament (2022)

Michael

Cooke (b. 1970)

Circles

(2019)

Mark Alburger (b. 1957)
     The Nativity According to St. Matthew, Op. 72 (1998)
           I. Now the Birth of Jesus Christ Was On This Wise

II. Now at Jesus's Birth in Bethlehem

III. In Bethlehem

IV. Where Is the King?

V. Find Me the King

VI. When They Saw the Star

VII. And Being Warned of God in a Dream

VIII. Then Herod

IX. An Angel of the Lord

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MONICA CHEW is an Oakland pianist and composer. In 2017 she released her first solo album, Tender and Strange, featuring works by Bartók, Janáček, Messiaen, Takemitsu, and Scriabin. A “gifted player with an affinity for deeply sensitive expression” (Whole Note), she has been featured on radio stations worldwide. She started composing in 2017 and couldn’t be happier about it. Prior to 2015, she worked nearly a decade as a principal software engineer on security and privacy at Mozilla and Google. She lives in Oakland with her husband, an 1899 Steinway B, a clavichord, and a disused violin.

 GHOST OFFICE (2022) grew out of a short poem that I wrote based on someone else's observation about the return to the office: "I put on my pants to go to the office and zoom all day." Though I no longer work in an office environment, I have experienced the joys of hybrid meetings for years and can only imagine how much worse it is after 2 years of Covid. Communication, socialization, and transit have long fascinated me. This is my depiction of an especially alienating and isolating time in office life.  

JOHN BEEMAN is a composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied with Peter Fricker and William Bergsma at the University of Washington where he received his Master’s degree. Mr. Beeman is the composer of three operas, symphonic and chamber works and numerous choral compositions. Works have been performed by the Santa Rosa Symphony, Boston Metro Opera, the Ives Quartet, Paul Dresher, and the Oregon Repertory Singers He has received awards through Meet the Composer, the American Composers Forum and ASCAP. Currently he is working on an opera about Ishi, the last Native American of his tribe to come out of the wilderness. 

AWAKENING (2022) "is my musical response to the Covid pandemic. I hope to express some of the thoughts and emotions we may have felt during this difficult time. Awakening begins softly and simply with sustained chords in the winds and strings. High passages in the violins suggest virus particles in the air. The music becomes more complex and dissonant followed by a tonal shift to a lyrical section. An uplifting fugal theme starts in the bassoon and cello which soon passes to clarinet and viola followed by winds and violins. Short phrases are exchanged in rhythms of three against two. A pedal point gradually builds to a dramatic fortissimo passage. The viola plays a lyrical melody which is imitated by violins. Woodwinds enter then strings rise to intense chords. This transforms to peaceful music :first in the strings then in the woodwinds. This section gradually winds down as the composition ends. Perhaps this suggests an easing of the virus and the welcome relief we all now feel.

STARDUST is an anarchist, animist, queer/genderqueer, radical faerie composer living in the somewhat embattled and mythical sanctuary of San Francisco. Since 2014, Stardust's SFCCO offerings have included A la recherche des danses perdues, Home, Railway Sonata, Wiggle, and a theatre triptych of True of Voice Overture, True of Voice Entr'acte, and True of Voice Finale. Stardust also playwrights, most recently creating Lucia, a play about a lesbian anarchist revolutionary organizer of a group called "Mujeres Libres" ("Free Women") during the Spanish Civil War and Social Revolution. Other works include chamber music and symphonic music prepared for encouraging musician friends at events such as the Humboldt and Calcap Chamber Music Workshops and welcoming ensembles such as the Opus Project Orchestra, the Golden Gate Symphony, the San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Freedom Band, and of course the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra. Stardust plays the oboe and the English horn.

LOBELIA'S LAMENT (2022) channels the existential angst of a lovely blue shade of floral shrub. Life as a collective of flowers is not, so to speak, all roses, especially when you're a league of lobelia. Merriam-Webster explores the more lascivious side with our "terminal clusters of showy lipped flowers" and notes that the leaves and tops of "Indian tobacco" may be used "as an expectorant and antispasmodic". The composer can only hope that listening to this composition will thoroughly expel any unwanted mucus and prevent objectionable spasms in the audience.  

The multi-instrumentalist MICHAEL COOKE is a composer of jazz and classical music. This two-time Emmy, ASCAPLUS Award, and Louis Armstrong Jazz Award winner plays a variety of instruments: you can hear him on soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, flute, soprano and bass clarinets, bassoon and percussion. A cum laude graduate with a music degree from the University of North Texas, he had many different areas of study: jazz, ethnomusicology, music history, theory, and, of course, composition. In 1991 Michael began his professional orchestral career, performing in many North Texas area symphonies. Michael has played in Europe, Mexico, and all over the United States. Cimarron Music Press began publishing many of Michael's compositions in 1994. After relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has been exploring new paths in improvised and composed music, mixing a variety of styles and techniques that draw upon the creative energy of a multicultural experience, both in and out of America. In 1999, Michael started a jazz label called Black Hat Records (blackhatrecords.com) and is currently on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra and the San Mateo County Astronomical Society. The San Francisco Beacon describes Michael's music as "flowing out color and tone with a feeling I haven't heard in quite a while. Michael plays with such dimension and flavor that it sets (his) sound apart from the rest." Uncompromising, fiery, complex, passionate, and cathartic is how the All Music Guide labeled Michael's playing on Searching by Cooke Quartet, Statements by Michael Cooke and The Is by CKW Trio. His release, An Indefinite Suspension of The Possible, is an unusual mixture of woodwinds, trombone, cello, koto and percussion, creating a distinct synergy in improvised music that has previously been untapped.

  10 CIRCLES (2022) "consists of ten different phrase sections. These selections are in a form known as circle music -- using phrases that can be played at any time and in any order. The phrase-range can be adjusted to by performers to best suit their instrument or what they are hearing. Music director will bring in the "performs" for each circle until all players are in the particular section. Director will need a hand sign to make sure everyone is the proper place. Most circles have overlap as the conductor brings instrumentalists into the next circle, with the exception of the eighth one. In that circle, everyone moves in at the same time: an instant move. Circle 10 also has special instructions: they will to remain on phrase and crescendo until the conductor ends the piece. I first learned about circle-music form from Dr. Cindy McTee, who wrote a circle-music piece for my bassoon teacher."                    

MARK ALBURGER is an award-winning, eclectic ASCAP composer of postminimal, postpopular, and postcomedic sensibilities. He is Music Director of SF Composers Chamber Orchestra, SF Cabaret Opera / Goat Hall Productions, and The Opus Project; Editor-Publisher of 21st-Century Music and New Music; Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and Literature at Diablo Valley College; and Musicologist for Grove Online and Grove Dictionary of American Music. His principal teachers were Gerald Levinson and Joan Panetti (Swarthmore College, B.A.); Jules Langert (Dominican University, M.A.); Christopher Yavelow (Claremont University, Ph.D.); and Terry Riley. Dr. Alburger has composed 410 major works, including chamber music, concertos, oratorios, operas, song cycles, and symphonies. His complete catalogue is available from New Music. YouTube/DrMarkAlburger, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Alburger, imslp.org/wiki/Category:Alburger,_Mark, markalburger.blogspot.com, markalburgerworks.blogspot.com.    

THE NATIVITY ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW, Op. 72 (1998) began as a series of musical Christmas cards several decades ago. Each of its nine movements is based on an Advent or Yuletide carol as found in the Presbyterian Hymbook, 1960 ("O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" through 8 following). To these are immaculate-conceptioned incarnations of G.F. Handel, Gian Carlo Menotti, Gustav Mahler, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Gregorian chant, and Medieval mystery plays -- in an overall context of Igor Stravinskian vernacular postminimalism. After today's first presentation as complete oratorio, Davis Community Church will present the work's theatrical / operatic world premiere 4pm, December 11, thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Tanke Foundation.

SAN FRANCISCO COMPOSERS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Mark Alburger Music Director and Conductor 

Erling Wold Associate Music Director 
John Kendall Bailey Associate Conductor

Michael Cooke Assistant Conductor 

Flute / Piccolo
Diana Gomez

Oboe / English Horn
Stardust

Clarinet / Bass Clarinet
Thibaut Mastrolia

Bassoon
Michael Cooke

Horn
Bob Satterford

Soprano
Megan Cullen  

Tenor 
Mark Alburger

Piano
Monica Chew 

Percussion
Mark Alburger
Megan Cullen
Victor Flaviani

Violin I
Kristen Kline  

Violin II
 Kat Walsh

Viola
Harry Bernstein 

Cello
Federico Strand Ramirez

Bass
John Beeman

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