Chamber

If the nearly 300 people at a Feb. 4 Ukiah concert are an indication, the Deep Valley Chamber Music series has finally arrived. One of the best-kept secrets in North Coast music, Deep Valley has been presenting increasingly challenging repertoire and first-cabin musicians since 2008, and the “Midw...

Symphony

Marin Symphony’s first concert of 2012 was on many levels a union of old and new. The symphony, as a musical genre, dates back to the 18th century, with the most notable examples being those of Mozart and Haydn. In the 19th Century its legacy was carried on by master symphonists Beethoven and Schube...

Symphony

On a day when several uncontrollable elements--lousy weather, football playoffs, hospital construction--conspired against them, guest conductor/pianist Jeffrey Kahane and the Santa Rosa Symphony packed the Wells Fargo Center by excelling at the one element firmly under their control: great music mak...

Virtuoso Korean pianist Yoonjung Han had tough barriers to surmount in her Jan. 19 Tiburon recital. Plying a repeat date for the Thursday Marin Musical Club after a 2011 recital had been cancelled, the Curtis Institute-trained pianist found an audience of 60 eager to hear her program, but was confr...

Recital

The program for Alexander Barantschik’s violin recital Jan. 15 in Newman Auditorium was not at first glance auspicious. And not because of the merits of the four sonatas, as all are masterpieces of the standard repertoire. The critical quandary was that the program was so conventional, the pieces ...

Chamber

Early music specialists Musica Pacifica played a concert Jan. 13 in the Petaluma Historical Museum that featured virtuoso Italian music from the 17th Century. The Museum is the stately columned old Carnegie Library and has a high ceiling, providing fine acoustics. The small audience was gathered ...

Chamber

Flutist Jeffrey Cohan's Jan. 8 recital in Santa Rosa’s Resurrection Parish was a combination of history, lecture and feats of virtuosity. An entire concert of unaccompanied flute might seem musically thin or missing something until Mr. Cohan plays, and then the realization comes that any other inst...

Chamber

A top quality baroque concert was presented at Santa Rosa’s Waldorf School Jan. 7 featuring the Ensemble Vermillian. Among the five performers at least nine instruments were used, and the variety of this instrumentation brought 17th and 18th Century musical gems to life. The Vermillian in the Soph...

Chamber

Musical detours can bring unexpected surprises, and on New Year’s Eve this writer’s drive to Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater party stopped early for chamber music at the downtown Historical Museum. Sponsored by the Museum and the Sky Hill Cultural Alliance, the concert with gratis holiday refres...

Symphony

Near the end of its Dec. 12 performance of the Brahms Requiem, a soprano in the Santa Rosa Symphony Honor Choir collapsed at the back of the stage, perhaps from excessive heat or lack of air. The incident wasn't surprising, since more than 100 singers were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the limited...

In the last of three identical programs honoring the bi-centennial birth of Liszt, the College of Marin Orchestra performed a varied program Nov. 22 in San Anselmo’s 1st Presbyterian Church before an audience of 200. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, in the version for chamber orchestra, began the concer...

Recital

Danish virtuoso Egon Petri once commented that most pianists “spend their melodic purse in small coin.” Elena’s Kuschnerova, in her second Concerts Grand appearance Nov. 20, would have none of that approach, playing a mercurial recital that left nothing on the table in the wake of her potent musical...

Symphony

One measure of the maturity of an orchestra is the ability to shape its sound to the personal musical vision of a guest conductor. So far this season, the American Philharmonic Sonoma County is proving that it has come of age, playing with great sensitivity and musicality under the direction of gue...

Symphony

Where were you at 22? Just graduating from college and trying to find a job? Contemplating a trip around the world to discover yourself? Writing musical masterpieces that would endure for more than 300 years and counting? If you’re Johann Sebastian Bach or Georg Friedrich Händel, the answers are no...

Symphony

“Is this my time to be alive and free?” That was the first intelligible question posed by soprano Marie Plette in her impassioned but often incomprehensible rendition of "The Promise of Time," a new song cycle by contemporary composer David Carlson. The work, part of the Magnum Opus project for new ...

Recital

Substituting for classical guitarist William Kanengiser, guitarist Adam Del Monte played his own compositions and promised a Tárrega solo November 11 at a Sonoma State University recital in Green Music Center 1028. Mr. del Monte’s playing was characterized by zippy scales and an adjusted instrume...

Symphony

The Marin Symphony’s Nov. 8 concert in the Marin Center featured the West Coast premiere of Kenji Bunch’s new Piano Concerto. Mr. Bunch, a Portland native and Juilliard School graduate, describes the work as a true “family project,” as he wrote it for his wife Monica Ohuchi, the evening’s soloist. ...

Chamber

An old musical friend was juxtaposed with two not-quite-so-old interlopers Nov. 6 when the venerable Trio Navarro opened their 2011-2012 season at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center 1028. Mendelssohn’s iconic D Minor Trio was the old shoe and Trios by Bridge and Turina were the unfamiliar...

Symphony

At 31, Alondra de la Parra is a conductor of immense promise, destined to lead a major orchestra — but first she has to work her way up through the minor leagues. Fortunately for Napa County, she made a brief stop Sunday with the Napa Valley Symphony, and the results were gratifying. The concert to...

Recital

Pianist Frank Wiens is a popular visitor to Northern California concert halls as recitalist and lecturer, but has strangely been absent from Mendocino County for decades. Under the auspices of the Concerts Grand series, this oversight was corrected Oct. 30 in a memorable recital at Mendocino Colleg...