Grant funds opera for Holocaust violins
Over the past decade, the esteemed San Francisco composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer have written three works for Music of Remembrance, the Seattle organization that commissions music about the Holocaust and brings forth forgotten works by artists who perished in it.
They’ve combined those three pieces — including a one-act opera dealing with the Nazi persecution of gay people, a subject Heggie knew nothing about until he got the commission — into the two-act “Out of Darkness: Two Remain,” scheduled for a fully staged premiere at Atlanta Opera next spring.
So Heggie was already deeply engaged in the subject when
Patricia Moy of Burlingame’s Music at Kohl Mansion asked him and Scheer to create a chamber opera inspired by the Violins of Hope. That’s the collection of string instruments that survived the concentration camps and Jewish ghettos, were restored by Israeli craftsmen, and became the subject of a book and documentary that told their potent stories. A string quartet will play four of those violins when Heggie’s piece premieres in 2020.
The commission was made possible by a $150,000 grant
from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation — one of 10 such grants Hewlett made last week to Bay Area nonprofits in the first round of its Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions, an $8 million commissioning project said to be the largest of its kind in the country.
Other grantees include Kronos Quartet, which has commissioned jazz and film composer Terence Blanchard to write a work about race relations, to be performed by an ensemble featuring Youth Speaks poets and the San Francisco Girls Chorus. With its Hewlett grant, Mills College is commissioning Meredith
Monk to create an immersive work for her vocal ensemble, musicians from the San Francisco Symphony and others.
The goal of Music of Remembrance, Heggie says, “is to give voice to voices silenced by the Holocaust. When this Violins of Hope commission came along, I thought, ‘How much closer can you get to the voices of the people who were silenced than the instruments they played?’ It’s an incredibly moving and inspiring project.”
The stories of those violins “are unbelievably harrowing and beautiful,” adds Heggie, who’s writing the work for soprano, string quartet and violin soloist (all to be named later).
“I love that they’re called Violins of Hope, not destruction or death. The goal is to awaken people so that we don’t forget the past, and we see a hopeful future.”
Heggie hasn’t started composing yet, but plans to evoke some of the feeling of the music played on those instruments 70 or 80 years ago, as well as “writing something of today, so their voices continue forward.”
For more information about the Hewlett grants, go to www. hewlett.org/50commissions.
Zeitlin does Strayhorn
The venerable Bay Area jazz pianist Denny Zeitlin returns to the Piedmont Piano Co. for another solo excursion Dec. 8, this time exploring the rich, sensuous music of Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington’s longtime composing and arranging associate. He wrote such beautiful pieces as “Chelsea Bridge,” “Lush Life” and “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing,” not to mention the Ellington theme song, “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
Immersing himself in Strayhorn’s work for the first time has been an enriching experience, Zeitlin says. “His music is broad and deep, and anticipated by many years a number of developments in jazz composition.”
For more information, go to www.piedmontpiano.com.
Tandy Beal and friends for the holidays
Noted Santa Cruz choreographer Tandy Beal and her company, which merges various modes of performance, brings “Joy!,” a holiday show mixing circus, dance and live music by the a cappella vocal group SoVoSó, to the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Friday-Sunday, Nov. 24-26, and to San Jose’s Hammer Theatre on Dec. 1-3.
The performers include clown Jeff Raz and physical comedian Diane Wasnak, veterans of the Pickle Family Circus and Cirque du Soleil.
For more information, go to www.tandybeal.com/joy.
Jackson to ACT
Mark Jackson, the noted Bay Area playwright, director, actor and teacher, has been hired as the new director of American Conservatory Theater’s Studio ACT, which provides training for adult actors of all levels of experience. He takes over the post from Nick
Gabriel, a former resident artist with the company who’s now an assistant professor at Chapman University in Southern California.
For more information, go to www.act-sf.org.