Duo’s fresh take on guitar, violin
Not a lot of composers have written for guitar and violin. But those who did wrote a lot for that instrumentation, says German-born guitarist Ines Thomé, who plays that music and more with violinist YuEun Kim in the cleverly named Yu & I Duo.
They plan to play classic violin-and-guitar pieces by two of those composers — the early 19th century guitar virtuoso Mauro Guiliani and his wizardly Italian compatriot Niccolò Paganini — as well as movie themes and Piazzolla tangos at San Francisco’s Old First Church on April 8.
Like some other pieces the Los Angeles duo takes up, Piazzolla’s 1986 “Histoire du Tango” was originally written for flute and guitar. Thomé, who’s three weeks away from getting her doctorate at USC’s Thornton School of Music, finds the violin more versatile than flute and loves how it sounds with guitar.
“It’s the power of the violin. It has fire and also can be very sweet,” says Thomé, who moved from Frankfurt to Los Angeles in 2013.
Thomé met Kim, a Korean who came from Seoul to study at USC, when they landed as housemates in an old Victorian near campus. They shared a passion for Korean food and chamber music.
The duo won top honors at the 2016 Beverly Hills National Auditions, a contest sponsored by the city of Beverly Hills, which produces chamber concerts at the city-owned Greystone Mansion & Gardens, once home to oil baron Edward Doheny’s son. The prize gave the duo some concert bookings and exposure to a consortium of Southern California music presenters.
For their San Francisco debut, Yu & I have programmed pieces from their “Cinematic Scenes’’ repertoire — Ennio Morricone’s familiar love theme “Nuovo Cinema Paradiso” and Stanley Myers’ beautiful “Cavatina” from “The Deer Hunter” (played on guitar on the soundtrack) — as well as Guiliani’s Sonata for violin and guitar; Manuel de Falla’s classic Siete Canciones Populares Españolas; and part of Paganini’s medley of sonatas for violin and guitar, “Centone di Sonate.”
That last one wasn’t heard in “The Devil’s Violinist,” the 2013 movie about Paganini, “but it should’ve been,” Thomé says, with a laugh. The music is graceful, eschewing the virtuosic brilliance associated with its composer.
It’s more lyrical “and very funny at moments,” the guitarist notes. “The themes are really wonderful. You expect the music to go all crazy, but it’s really a sweet piece.”
When not doing the duo thing, Kim and Thomé each play with other chamber groups. Thomé plays electric guitar in Sunset Club Trio, which includes a violinist and an acoustic guitarist, doing arrangements of Spanish music. The electric instrument “brings a new sound to it,” says Thomé.
For more information, go to www.oldfirstconcerts.org.
Stern Grove picnic
Of the $3 million that San Francisco’s venerable Stern Grove Festival raises every year for its free concert series and education programs, about $600,000 comes from the Big Picnic Party fundraiser that precedes the opening-day festivities.
Now on sale, tickets to the Big Picnic Party on June 17 provide a private catered lunch and a reserved picnic-table seat — a prime viewing spot in the mobbed Grove — for the opening-day concert featuring soul crooners Peabo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne. For more information, go to www.sterngrove.org.
Ethnic dance
Back in the Opera House again, the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival celebrates its 40th birthday with performances July 14-15 and July 21-22 showcasing Bay Area ensembles performing dance and music from many locales — Bolivia, Cambodia, Cuba, Tahiti and Zimbabwe, among them.
The festival, which opens July 6 with free public performances at noon in the City Hall rotunda, includes the premieres of eight pieces created for the occasion, and a performance by Chuna McIntyre and the Nunamta Yup’ik Eskimo Singers and Dancers of a work the producers say hasn’t been see in more than 200 years “in regalia that has taken nearly four decades to create.”
For more information, go to www.sfethnicdancefestival.org.
Durst, encore
San Francisco political satirist Will Durst’s show at the Marsh, “Durst Case Scenario,” which riffs on the chaotic state of the union in the time of Trump, has been extended through May 29. His topics fall under headings like “Symptoms of PTSD (Post Trump Stress Disorder)” and “Mike Pence is the Product of Reverse Taxidermy.”
For more information, go to www.themarsh.org.